


Under the Same Sky

by whenyoudesertme (phrenk)



Category: Arashi (Band), Japanese Actor RPF, Johnny's Entertainment
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cohabitation, F/M, Fluff, Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2015-03-14
Packaged: 2018-03-23 05:50:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3756829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phrenk/pseuds/whenyoudesertme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the first day of weeks to herself, Yuriko discovers her traveling best friend has offered to let someone stay in their place during her trip.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for jadeswallow for White Day this year. ♥ Thank you (and thank you and thank you) to my beta, Kino, and also to Top for her patience and enthusiasm on demand. ♥ First posted [here](http://je-whiteday.livejournal.com/82529.html) and re-posted as myself [here](http://whenyoudesertme.livejournal.com/38872.html).

Yuriko woke late on purpose, having declined to set an alarm. She was used to getting up early to eat breakfast with Masami and Yuu before they all headed out to their respective jobs, but with both her roommates gone that Monday, she was luxuriantly alone in the apartment. Even weirder, she didn't have to go in to the office at all for weeks. That was because she had an awful deadline looming and had been sent home to focus, of course, with the implication that she needn't come back if she hadn't finished the budget for next year, but she still saw it as something of a treat.

It didn't really seem like turning it in a day or two after the due date would make that much difference in implementing a budget for an entire company, but Yuriko suspected that she shouldn't voice a feeling like that when she was the company's accountant. Working from home did make it easier to ignore the emails begging for more money for this department or that, and it completely eliminated the slightly more subtle visits from department heads bearing gifts, or so she hoped. She liked to look at finances from a completely practical and numerical perspective, which was what made her so good at her job, but it was harder when she had to talk to the people whose work she was analyzing.

Now she had two and a half weeks at home to work, uninterrupted. Yuu being gone was nothing new lately, given her seemingly consuming relationship. Yuriko expected the official notice that Yuu had moved out any day now given she spent just about all of her time at her older boyfriend's apartment. It would be much stranger, however, to have Masami gone, Masami who was a constant presence in Yuriko's life. She'd taken Masami to the airport the day before for her scientific conference in Istanbul, but it hadn't sunk in yet that Masami really wouldn't be back to make dinner even though it was her turn.

It was nice, though, to have the prospect of days and days alone, with nothing she needed to do but work she enjoyed anyway, even if she also enjoyed procrastinating almost to the breaking point.

Before she could emerge into the blissfully empty apartment to start procrastinating, however, she had a message to reply to. She'd been putting it off since the night before, but she didn't want to be hurtful by delaying any longer, no matter her decision. She was going to deal with it before she left her room.

It was from Ikuta Toma, of course, Toma who'd been flirting with her and caring about her and laughing with her for weeks now. Toma, the handsome salary-man; Toma, whom she felt she might almost, maybe, kind of like...

Yuriko wasn't used to liking people in a way where she saw a possible future with them, the way she thought she might with Toma. She much preferred having fun with guys and seeing the amicable end coming from the beginning.

Taking a deep breath, she held her phone and stared at Toma's message asking her out. She knew, even if she didn't want to admit it, just why she was hesitating.

She was still hung up on someone else.

Ninomiya Kazunari. Her best friend's ex-boyfriend. It'd never been possible, not when he'd been dating Masami, not while their relationship had crashed and burned, and not after, while Masami was grieving. Yuriko hadn't even seen him in five years.

And yet, here she was hesitating over her reply to a kind, attractive, funny man with whom she could imagine herself falling in love. For a moment as she tried to remember the warmth of Toma's smile, all she could picture was Nino's sparkling eyes and the nimble movements of his hands showing her card tricks while Masami made dinner.

Sighing, Yuriko bounced up and down on the balls of her feet for a minute and tried to wipe Nino from her mind forever. It was the kind of action that would get a laugh from Masami if she saw her doing it, the kind of thing that other people found weird and Masami found weird and charming. As usual, it was thinking of Masami that finally got her to stop thinking about Nino.

She sent her acceptance to Toma, setting the date for nearly three weeks away since she was practically under house arrest with this deadline, and opened her door to start the day.

Outside, with one hand raised to knock and a startled expression on his face, was Ninomiya Kazunari.

~

She was almost entirely sure she wasn't dreaming. It was _Nino_ , really him.

Nino, in a slim-cut gray suit, regaining his composure before her eyes as she tried not to lose hers completely. His hair was a natural black now--how had she ever thought he'd looked ideal in his younger days of brown?--and cut in a way that looked both stylish and easily rumpled. She could see a smile coming on in the corners of his mouth.

Yuriko huffed out a hysterical giggle and had to press a hand over her mouth to keep in anything louder.

"Madam?" Nino said seriously. "May I ask which accommodations are mine?" His eyes were snapping with amusement as he held up a key and wiggled it meaningfully. When she didn't reply at once, his eyes slid down and took in her clothes, which were, unfortunately, not exactly something she'd wear in public. His gaze lingered almost helplessly at her t-shirt (this incident was going to scare her into wearing a bra 24 hours a day), then trailed down her plain sweatpants to land on her bare feet.

Somehow not having to steel herself to meet his eyes gave her a piece of her calm back. "Welcome," she said, slurring a little as if she'd woken up even more recently than she had. "I wasn't aware we'd started taking in guests."

"You are quite an exclusive inn, it's true," he said, locking his eyes back on hers. "But you see, I am a special case. _And_ I have a reservation."

"Do you now?" she said, tilting her head to one side as if to take all of him in. Her heart was beating so fast he could probably see it thump through the thin cotton of her shirt. "And how much is the going rate for such a special guest?"

"The final death of all my sweetest memories," he said promptly. He assumed a mournful expression a bit belatedly, then grinned at her like she was in on all his jokes.

"Your sweetest memories..." she repeated slowly. Her reeling mind bounced from idea to idea before landing on one she immediately knew was true.

_Masami._

He was here, somehow, because of Masami, and if she weren't so drunk off his sudden appearance, in a freaking suit, no less, she'd have realized it at once.

She did her best to smile back at him gamely. "The rate's gone up."

Nino's grin moved from his mouth to his eyes and stayed there with a sparkle. "Is that so? It seemed so high already." He took a deep breath, then said passionately, almost gasping out the words, "Ahh, lost love! Without these precious moments to look to in the darkest hours of the--"

"Yeah, it's gone up," Yuriko said, ruthless in her pained bewilderment. She didn't even bother to laugh at his ridiculousness, though part of her wanted to. "Non-negotiable, I'm afraid. This... this inn is in need of, um... bananas."

"Bananas," he said, looking blankly. "Let me confirm what you said: this inn needs bananas? I can't possibly have heard correctly."

She smiled at him despite herself, glad to have caught him off-balance even for a moment. In that moment, when she'd have done anything to get rid of him so she could figure out just what was going on, a growing part of her, long ignored but never forgotten, just wanted to take his hands and pull him to her and never let him go.

Instead, she said, "Take it or leave it. Even special guests have rules, you know."

"But I just got here," he whined. "It can be paid tomorrow, right?" He lifted his eyebrows at her pleadingly, clutching his hands to his chest. Her eyes trailed down to gaze at those cute, competent hands against the backdrop of his periwinkle shirt and navy blue tie.

"Why are you wearing a suit," she mumbled helplessly, then held up a hand as his eyes lit and his mouth opened. "Irrelevant. The inn needs bananas." It sounded less effective every time. She said desperately, "And there's a long waiting list for your room, so if you'd like to keep it--"

As soon as she said it, she winced, realizing this meant that if he brought back bananas, he'd be in the apartment with her own agreement. She didn't know if Nino didn't notice her slip, or if he was feeling so lazy that a trip out for fruit seemed a colossal task, but his body language remained sulky.

He did have a strange look on his face, like she was the undivided object of his attention right then and he had some thoughts he wanted to keep private. She couldn't really tell what was going on; she was losing her ability to keep it together and just needed him to leave, even temporarily.

" _Bananas_ ," he said at last, and he made it sound like a curse word. Then he smiled at her cheerfully. "Your wish is my command, madam."

This seemingly respectful sentence was undermined, to her shock, by him reaching out, resting his hand on her head, and giving her hair a friendly couple of pats.

"It's really good to see you again, Yuriko-chan."

She got something out around her unruly heart in her throat, though she wasn't sure what she said or if he could even understand the words, then closed the door on him to panic in peace. She heard him call from the hallway, "I'll be back soon with your payment!" as she collapsed on her bed and muffled her anxiety-ridden laughter in her pillow.

~

Masami was in an airport in Moscow waiting for her flight to Istanbul, but she sounded like she'd been expecting Yuriko's call.

"Take a breath, Yuriko. He's only there for two weeks, okay?"

Her calm voice had Yuriko breathing better even as it all made less and less sense to her.

"Maa-chan, nothing about this is all right--I'm not even sure where to start?" She didn't know why it came out a question, except that it felt like all she had right then was questions and panic, and somehow it was hard to panic when talking to someone who had it as much together as Masami.

"Here, I can do it for you," Masami said, laughing. "First, why is he there? He has a deadline, just like you, though I didn't know you had one too when I agreed to let him stay in Yuu-chan's room. Second, yes, I did ask Yuu-chan if he could use her room for a couple weeks. Third, how could I--"

"How could you let your ex-boyfriend spend two weeks in your apartment like it's nothing?" Yuriko cut in, trying not to sound like she was too personally invested in the whole thing. Surely it was okay for her to be worried about this, even if she'd been free of secret feelings for Nino. It was _weird._

"We're friends now."

They were three words that seemed to alter Yuriko's entire outlook on life. "Friends?" she stuttered. She pulled her phone away to look at it like it might be lying to her somehow, then brought it back. "I thought you hated him!"

"Hated him? Never," Masami said quietly. "Look, I know it ended badly--"

"You still love him?" She couldn't hold the question in. It felt like her heart balanced on what Masami might say.

"I told you, we're friends," Masami answered, sounding a bit impatient. "Look, he has a huge deadline coming up and he lives with four other guys, one of whom is _Aiba-chan._ You remember Aiba-chan, right, the human golden retriever puppy?"

Yuriko ignored this distraction and focused on what she needed to hear to get through two weeks with the person she'd had inextricably on her mind for seven years. "Friends? And the horrific silent explosion of your relationship five years ago..."

"Forgotten. Or, I survived it. He's my friend now, Yuriko, and I promised him some space. I thought you'd be working most of the time, and I didn't know it'd be such a big deal to you..."

Yuriko stayed silent, trying to hold her feelings in. She discovered her hand was resting on her hair, right where Nino had touched her, but she couldn't bring herself to move it.

After a moment, Masami offered, "And if it is, then I'll back out, okay? He can stay at a hotel or something if he has to be somewhere quiet."

"Golden retriever," Yuriko sighed, and squeezed her eyes shut on the words she was about to say. "He can stay."

"Thank you." Masami's relief was obvious in her voice. "I know it's weird, but he's important to me, you know?"

Yuriko hadn't known. Now she did, and she didn't know what to do with the idea of Masami being friends with Nino, let alone while she had Nino to herself in her space for days on end.

She didn't have any more words that wouldn't betray her or hurt Masami, so she said as positively as she could, "Have a good flight to Istanbul, Maa-chan!"

"I'll call when I get in," her best friend promised, sounding suddenly giddy about her present adventure.

Yuriko had to smile, remembering Masami's excitement at heading out to conquer the world one presentation on stem cells at a time.

"I'm proud of you," she said, and she didn't have to feign anything to say it.

~

Sadly, it probably wouldn't take Nino very long to buy bananas. After talking to Masami, Yuriko quickly changed clothes into something still casual, but slightly more presentable, then sat on her bed for long minutes, desperately composing herself.

She decided that Nino patting her on the head was a sign of the way forward. There had been nothing sexual about that friendly touch, and nothing romantic, either. It showed that he was comfortable with her.

Nino had always been comfortable with her.

Yuriko was going to be comfortable with him, too, even if it meant she had to scream into her pillow every night to vent excess feeling.

By the time Nino was letting himself in with his borrowed key, she was as ready as she could be.

"So why are you wearing a suit?" she said without preamble.

Nino, who'd been slipping out of his shoes with his back to the living room, visibly jumped, but his face was composed enough when he turned to face her.

"I had to give a presentation to the movie execs, you see, to persuade them to give me a couple more weeks to finish this script. Of course it was a foregone conclusion, given my charm, but a slick suit surely doesn't hurt, hm?"

He grinned at her, then twirled demonstratively in his socks, the laden plastic bag in his hand swinging in a wide arc.

"Are those the bananas, then?" Yuriko asked noncommittally. "They can go on the kitchen table."

She left him grumbling about a woman who appreciated his suit's assets less than a room full of stodgy old men, but by the time she was leaning against the counter in the kitchen, he was coming in as well. He put the bananas on the table, and then, as she put her hand on one chair as if to pull it back and sit in it, he sat smoothly in one of the others.

Yuriko pulled her hand back and remained standing. Despite having to keep a grip on her feelings all the time (how had she forgotten how much she liked seeing him pretzel his legs together when he sat?), she was smug with the success of her small ploy.

"Now, let's lay down the rules," she said.

He motioned at the bananas and opened his mouth, clearly to make some sort of quip, but she just kept talking.

"Deadlines, both of us. Space to work. And your room, it's down the hall last door on the left. You know where mine is now, but, well, that's irrelevant to you." She scratched her chin with one finger, then used that to gesture toward the living room. "I work at the couch, since I like spreading all my papers over the coffee table. I don't care where you work, as long as you're quiet..."

He raised his hand like she was his teacher and he wanted to be called on to speak.

"Ninomiya-kun?" she said, trying to keep a blank face. He snickered and played along.

"What about meals, Yoshitaka-san?" he asked politely.

She hadn't thought about meals. She bluffed, "That's simple," and let that hang in the air as if she'd said something portentous.

In that silence before Nino either questioned her or laughed, she figured she had her best opening to execute her plan for making this work. She took a quick breath, reminded herself that she was _comfortable_ with Ninomiya Kazunari, and stepped forward and patted him gently on the head.

"Let's work well together, Nino-chan!"

It was going perfectly, she thought: playful without being flirty, comfortable without being too handsy. Then she made the mistake of meeting his eyes.

She was still touching his soft hair, a barely-there touch that suddenly seemed like it was either patronizing or a caress, and she wasn't sure which way the balance would tip. There was a flash in his eyes that she knew was echoed in hers as something sparked between them that felt a lot like a challenge.

It was all Yuriko could do not to snatch her hand away, but she managed to make it a smooth motion instead. She kept her eyes on his, though, not backing down, because she was comfortable with him, she was going to get through this, and this had been her _plan._

A corner of Nino's mouth tugged up into a smile. "Let's take care of each other, Yuriko-chan!" he said, which was subtly different from her words and a lot less impersonal.

She narrowed her eyes at him, then stopped with an effort. _Comfortable._

Instead of the retorts she could have made, or the mental breakdown she longed to have, she said briefly, "Thank you for the bananas."

Leaving the room, she was dizzy on the sound of Nino's delighted laugh.

~

Despite what she'd said, she actually started work in the kitchen, if glancing idly at her charts while she ate lunch counted as working. To celebrate having made it an hour in the same apartment as Nino without bursting into tears, confessing, or running wildly around the room in a panic, she ate a victory banana.

When she couldn't drag it out any longer, she moved to the living room. She sat on her couch and spread out all her papers and tried, unsuccessfully, to ignore Nino's presence in the room. He was curled up in one of the armchairs with a notebook in his lap and a pencil behind one ear. He was in pajama pants and a t-shirt and a cozy cardigan, and he looked appealing and domestic and dreadfully young, though she remembered he was five years older than she was.

She was sneaking looks at him entirely too often. He hadn't spoken to her, hadn't seemed even to look at her in the hours they'd been in the same room, though she swore she felt his gaze on her when she was trying to immerse herself in her numbers. Somehow, that made it worse. It was hard to resist paying attention to him when he wasn't trying for her attention, because the weakness was entirely in herself.

On top of that, her hair was in her eyes. She kept pushing it back, shoving it to the side, but nothing worked. She needed her headband, which had been on her head when she moved to the couch from the kitchen and now was nowhere to be found.

Why had she even cut bangs in the first place, especially when growing them back out was such a pain? Yuriko stared at tables of financial figures and saw herself going to the bathroom and chopping off _all_ her hair to end the frustration of dealing with it over and over. She shifted on her cushion, feeling Nino's eyes on her again, but when she glanced up he was studiously writing in his notebook.

Stifling a grumpy sigh, she put her paper back in the array on the coffee table and stood up to make a search for the blasted thing. She ran her hand between the sofa cushions, then checked underneath it and the table, and shook out the throw blanket in case it'd gotten tangled inside somehow.

Nothing. She plopped back down on the couch with a huff and grabbed the nearest paper to hand.

It was a copy of an email from Toma, and even though it was entirely budget-related, her heart twinged. It was the first time she'd thought of him since Nino had arrived. They'd agreed on a little space while Yuriko worked hard on the budget, but maybe she should send him a message, just to say hello... a message back from him would surely be a distraction from Nino as much as from work.

A gentle touch on her face had her stilling, unable to breathe.

She looked up as Nino brushed the hair back from her forehead and slid her headband on in one deft movement. His face was close to hers, with his eyes intent on his task. She dragged in a breath as she saw that those eyes were lighter than she remembered, a mellow brown in the light from her reading lamp.

"You were looking for this?" he said quietly, looking pleased as he met her stunned stare. As if to put the finishing touch on his gesture, he trailed a hand down and tucked a stray lock of hair behind one of her ears.

Yuriko had to take in another breath before she could answer, but she managed to avoid gasping as she did. "I was," she agreed. Some instinct had her refusing to lean away from him, and she decided that it was only that she didn't want to show him she was any less comfortable than he was.

She was completely fine with this, after all, with Nino in her living room, his face close to hers, his hand still lingering like he wanted to touch her hair again. It was ... comfortable.

"Thank you," she said at last, and managed a small, tight smile.

"No problem," he said seriously, lips quirking in smug response. She couldn't remember the exact time she'd last felt such an intense physical reaction to someone, but she was sadly sure it'd been caused by Nino then as well. She became aware that she was showing far too much nervousness to keep up her pretense of ease with him, so she had to think quickly.

He was already moving away when her hand shot out to give him a pat on the cheek. It definitely turned more patronizing than she meant it, but she kept her expression light, hoping he wouldn't see through her, and patted him again.

Nino froze, and something flared hot in his eyes as he looked back at her. Yuriko went stock-still in involuntary response, feeling heat flicker through her like she was waking up to something new just by touching him.

The last pat turned into something longer, less assured and more wanting, and when she finally pulled her hand away, Nino was visibly disconcerted.

Or maybe, she told herself, he was just surprised. After all, who was she to caress his cheek? He'd known her since she was nineteen and still putting herself through college as a convenience store clerk, and she'd only ever been Masami's friend to him.

Whatever his expression meant, it was gone by the time he crossed the room and sat back down in his chair.

Her mind was still whirling as she tried to focus on her papers enough even to pretend to be working. She supposed they'd been friends, back then, if she were honest about their relationship. They'd always gotten along. And no matter how hot she felt just from touching his face, there was no way he'd see her as anything else when the real reason he was there was probably--

She bit her tongue hard, trying not to think the idea through to its logical conclusion. It didn't work.

He was probably there because he wanted Masami back.

It shouldn't hurt so much when she'd always, always thought of him, first and foremost, as Masami's.

She stood abruptly. "I'm going out for some food. Probably noodles."

Though she didn't look at him, she knew that this time she wasn't imagining Nino's eyes on her.

"What, the bananas aren't enough after all?" he said. He seemed subdued, though she was probably projecting.

"When I come back I'll have a bath and go to bed," she said, as much to herself as to him. "I need to get a lot of work done tomorrow and it'll be important to focus."

"Of course," he said, no hint of teasing in his tone. "I'm rooting for you in your work, Yuriko-san."

She couldn't keep from smiling at that, though she refused to let herself meet his eyes. "Same to you," she said, and made her escape.

~

Everything went to plan for a while, from dinner out of the house, to texting Toma and receiving his characteristically appealing response, to taking a bath and going to bed early, though it took a while to fall asleep. Now that she knew the texture of Nino's hair and the feel of his smooth skin under her hand, she had even more to obsess over than usual, not to mention the whole _seeing him after five years and suddenly sharing an apartment with him_ thing.

Actually, face-touching aside, she was handling it all rather well, she decided, turning her face to the other side of her pillow. It was this thought, true or not, that finally got her in a frame of mind restful enough for sleeping, especially with the determination to keep up her show of ease the next day as well. As an afterthought, she also decided to get some actual work done, but surely that was of lesser importance due to its relative lack of difficulty.

She slept well, and in the morning she was up and out of bed before remembering Nino was in her apartment. The thought hit her like a cold shower. Or a hot shower, maybe, considering the kind of shock it was, but she wasn't thinking about that. She decided to concentrate her mind on her next move in her and Nino's little seesaw.

He'd patted her head, so she'd patted his head back. He'd put her headband on for her, so she'd given him a friendly touch on the cheek. Going by the order, it was his move, but it was time for her to show him--and herself--that she was really, truly over him, even if she had to force herself to be so.

She took a deep breath at her door, reminded herself harshly that he was almost definitely there because he wanted Masami back, and headed to the kitchen for food.

Nino was standing at the stove in Yuriko's apron, busily cooking breakfast. He turned and smiled at her, expression sleepy and uncomplicated, and her heart lurched.

He was clearly cooking for both of them. He looked adorable in her apron that said _FOOD FOOD FOOD_ all over it. And his hair was sticking up in all directions.

His eyes crinkled as his smile got bigger. "I'm making breakfast!" he said, turning back to the stove and stirring something. "You said you had a long day of work ahead of you, so I figured we could both use a good meal to start off."

"Um," Yuriko said, her voice coming out even huskier than usual. "I'm gonna go. I mean, I'll be right back."

She turned around and walked right back to her bedroom. She knew it was in the wee hours of the morning in Istanbul, but Masami should have arrived by now, and _might_ still be awake. Masami might even be staying up late to wait until it was late enough in Tokyo to call her and let her know she'd arrived safely, Yuriko reasoned.

Even if Masami was sleeping and wouldn't respond for hours, Yuriko had to get something out in her best friend's direction in terms of communication. She was going to go out of her mind otherwise and do something she'd regret forever, like grabbing Nino and kissing him until neither of them could breathe.

To: Masami  
From: Yuriko  
 _I think Nino wants you back._

As soon as she pushed send, she thought to wonder if Masami's phone even worked in Istanbul. It was both comforting and sickening to think of sending something key to her feelings out into the abyss. She couldn't bring herself to ask Masami anything directly, which made her feel more ashamed of her secret feelings than she had in years of properly pretending they didn't exist, but she had to find out some scrap of something before she could look at Nino again.

Her phone buzzed almost immediately with a response.

To: Yuriko  
From: Masami  
 _Haha, no way!_

Yuriko stared at this for an eternity, refusing to blink. In her own tangle of emotions, she forgot Masami's general straightforwardness and read all sorts of possible subtext into her response. Masami could be flattered, or excited, or maybe she hadn't thought of Nino that way in years and now Yuriko had been the one to remind her...

Another buzz. It had probably only been a few seconds, but Yuriko rubbed some moisture back into her eyes just in case they'd dried out from staring.

To: Yuriko  
From: Masami  
 _... No way. If that's true, and I'm not at all prepared to believe it is, it is officially your job as my friend to steer him away from that idea, okay?_

Yuriko choked on her next breath, mind spinning at all the possible implications of that request. She sent some sort of assent back, utterly unable to process.

She found herself moving toward the kitchen on a weak-kneed wave of sheer impulse.

In the living room, she bonked her head against the wall a few times, just because. Her plan of touching comfortably hadn't changed, she didn't think, or at least nothing better was coming to mind at any of the quiet thunks of her forehead against plaster. What had changed, she realized, probably because she'd accidentally hit her head particularly hard, was her perception of Masami's feelings. She rubbed the bump that was forming and considered the facts.

Masami didn't want Nino back. It couldn't be any clearer. And she'd practically ordered Yuriko to flirt with him, or at least ordered her to do _something_ , with flirting being an obvious option that Masami would have considered and hadn't bothered to specify as forbidden.

Nino probably wanted Masami back, that part was still true, but that didn't mean Yuriko couldn't indulge herself in some harmless flirtation. After all, now she didn't have to worry that this seesaw challenge over casual touching was stepping in any way on Masami's feelings... only Yuriko's own. (Nino, she figured, could take care of himself.)

She grinned a little as she decided to risk it, giving the living room wall a final headbutt to seal the deal. It was always more fun to be bold, after all, so she walked into the kitchen, saw Nino sitting at the table with a full plate in front of him, and smiled at him.

He looked momentarily taken aback, which made her think her face was looking strange of its own volition like it sometimes did, but he smiled back and returned to eating quickly enough.

"I thought I heard someone knocking," he said.

Yuriko didn't bother to explain. "Thank you for making breakfast," she said instead, voice pitched low, and walked behind Nino to give his shoulders a brisk massage.

She was two seconds into her gesture when Nino jerked away with a pained yelp. She snatched her hands back and turned around so Nino wouldn't see her face even if he looked, then stuttered a one-word apology and skulked over to the food instead to fix herself a plate.

"My shoulders are a little sensitive," Nino said, sounding embarrassed. She shrugged in response, face hot in a way that had nothing to do with the stove she was standing over unseeingly. She wasn't sure but it felt like she was starting to sweat.

She'd never been particularly clumsy with guys, even when she was the one making the moves on them. Weird, yes; she got called weird a lot, but it had never seemed to matter very much. With Nino, it seemed like every other step was a stumble, which didn't make any sense. She couldn't possibly still love him after five years without seeing his face. Wanting to jump his bones made total sense to her, but that was no reason to feel _nervous._

She nodded to herself at these thoughts, deciding they were the truth, and regrouped. So a shoulder massage hadn't worked, but there were lots of other kinds of casual touches to show he didn't affect her, at least not in ways she didn't expect and enjoy. She pictured resting a hand on his arm, or his knee, or trying to trip him as he walked by the couch, though that might be too childish. Reaching vaguely for the pan of eggs, her thoughts slid to less casual touches on more dangerous parts of Nino's body.

She was imagining sliding a leg between both of his when he grabbed her outstretched hand from behind and held it in place.

"Careful," he said, and even though it wasn't very loud she could just about feel his voice with how close he was standing. "You almost burned yourself."

She looked down at his hand on hers, seeing how close she'd gotten to touching the hot metal of the pan with her bare hand. She huffed out a nervous breath, wondering if her eyes might actually pop out, and felt Nino move a tiny bit closer.

"Here," he said, voice steadying. "I'll give you a remedial cooking lesson, Yuriko-chan." He tucked his chin against her shoulder, his cheek touching her hair, and moved their joined hands away from the burner. He guided her fingers to a potholder, letting them brush it meaningfully, but he didn't let her go.

Surprising herself, Yuriko snickered, then laughed out loud as Nino tensed behind her. He was trying to be _smooth_ with her! Just because it had totally worked didn't mean it wasn't hilarious.

It had totally worked, and was still working, but she found herself on far more solid ground than she'd been on a few minutes before. There was no reason for her to be so worked up over him after all. She saw now that this was a situation she'd been in many times before: she was interested in flirting with someone who was interested in flirting right back. She could indulge her feelings, her light and mostly physical feelings, in a harmless way practically sanctioned by Masami already, without falling in love with Nino again. She might have wavered in that belief if she thought it through but she couldn't really think with Nino touching her. Surely her instincts wouldn't lead her astray, though, especially when she had a bruise on her forehead from such careful deliberation in the living room with the wall.

Her heart racing despite her careful logic, she leaned back comfortably against Nino's chest. "How remedial can these lessons go?" she murmured, still amused. "I mean, just what does one use to ladle soup, teacher... a fork?"

He sighed noisily, tilting his head away from hers though his chin stayed firmly against her shoulder. "I sense your mockery, I really do. I wasn't warned this inn would have such a sarcastic servant--oof!"

Fresh from her elbow poking him in the side, Yuriko mumbled, "Don't you mean proprietor."

"And violent, too," he mused as if to himself. "I don't remember you being so difficult, Yuriko-chan."

Yuriko would have sworn the kitchen spun around them as they leaned against each other in the kitchen, hands entwined. Time slowed down, and she heard his words over and over again, ricocheting off the fraying edges of her sanity. This was Nino, the same Nino from years before, and she was the same girl from back then, deep down.

Just like that, her smile died away, right along with her false sense of security. She didn't doubt his memory of her was of a stammering, blushing girl, one so infatuated with him she could barely pronounce his name without missing a syllable.

She'd loved him so much it made her ache to remember it.

If she hadn't been leaning on him, she might have slid to the floor. How could she have ever thought he'd be someone she could flirt with harmlessly? Just seeing his face outside her door, she admitted to herself far too late, had brought all the feelings back.

At last she said, "I'm not surprised."

Something in her tone seemed to let him know to let go of her, because he did at once, moving away and nearly falling over the nearest chair in his haste. She turned to him, feeling brittle, and watched his face change as he looked at her.

He looked stunned.

She didn't have enough emotional energy left over to decipher that, so she simply filled a plate with food and took it to the living room to gather up her papers.

She would work in her room from then on.

~

Yuriko didn't spend the entirety of the next four days in her room, but it certainly felt like it. She ate there, she slept there, and, most of all, she worked there.

She actually worked, on her actual work, in a way that was more focused than she'd experienced in years. She'd always thought she did better by waiting until the last minute when it came to big projects, but now she thought maybe heartbreak was even better for her focus than the panic that resulted of procrastination.

She didn't know if it was heartbreak, exactly, though... When she thought about it, her heart didn't feel broken. But one thing she was only now learning about herself was that when her deepest emotions were involved, attempting to work through them rationally only led to lying to herself.

So instead of making plans, or deciding what her feelings meant, or trying to push through them via logic, Yuriko worked tirelessly with cold, hard numbers, and she kept away from Nino. She had no idea what he made of all this. In the brief moments in bed before she passed out for the night, she had to flail around a bit in protest of her past self's utter ridiculousness. From the time Nino had knocked on her door to the time she'd taken the breakfast he'd made her to eat it in her room with no explanation, she'd been on a roller coaster ride, and Nino had been strapped in next to her whether he liked it or not.

In those brief minutes of introspection, she beat at her pillow remembering sending him out for bananas. When she remembered hurting his shoulders with her massage, she kicked and kicked until the sheets hit the floor, defeated. Just remembering leaning back against him and talking in what had felt then like a sultry manner but had probably actually being off-putting made her bounce her hips on the bed so violently that her whole body jerked around as if she could break free from her own memories.

She'd blown hot and cold and every temperature between, and the few moments of self-control she'd thought she had were because she'd been lying to herself the whole time. With how much she'd confused herself, Nino probably had whiplash.

For the vast majority of those four days, though, Yuriko didn't consciously think about any of it. She worked and worked and worked until she thought her brain might give out, and if she suspected she was working through some things underneath, she didn't bother to confirm it.

She would wake up late, grab food from the kitchen, and nod at Nino if she saw him, but not speak. Then she'd work until mid-afternoon, practically bulldozing her way through the giant budget project, before taking a break and leaving the house for some sort of filling meal. She'd work again until she heard Nino go to bed, and after that it was her favorite part of those days: sitting out on her balcony and staring at the stars.

It was cool late at night, so she wrapped herself in a blanket and huddled in one of the three chairs that she'd picked out with Yuu and Masami a couple years before. She'd have worked her mind nearly to its breaking point all day, and in reward she got an hour or two of thoughtless time communing with the starry sky.

She couldn't see that many stars with the lights and smog of Tokyo, but somehow she could feel them, and no matter what, the sky was soothing. It felt like she stared up into her own mind, but not the anxious, impulsive mind it'd been with Nino, but her deeper self, the part of her that she felt sometimes when she was most at peace. If part of being strange to other people was having the night sky inside of her, Yuriko wouldn't ever try to be normal.

Eventually she'd get cold enough that discomfort would intrude on her serenity, and then it all seemed a little silly, but instead of thinking about it, she'd only go inside, grab some snacks to eat in her room, and do some final work on the budget before she took a bath and went to bed, complete with obligatory shameful revisiting of the past for those terrible minutes before she could fall asleep.

It was working, she could tell, but she couldn't tell what it was working _toward._ She didn't try to figure it out, and by the time she realized she was starting to feel ready to emerge from this odd cocoon of time, she took a break in her repeated slams of her willpower against the budget only to notice that she was done.

She printed the budget out and held the thick stack of paper in her hands, feeling the weight of what she could do when she really put her mind to it. Then she left the house and got drunk at a nearby street market. She perched herself on a stool at a likely looking food stand and ate fried things and drank sake and asked the owner questions. Over the course of the evening, she drew him completely out of his crotchety shell until he was talking to her like she might inherit the place someday and needed to know every secret of the business.

She stumbled home late that night and went straight out onto the balcony, barely bothering to nod at Nino's startled face looking at her from his chair as she passed. She could feel she'd collide with him soon, but she wasn't ready yet. Also, she thought she might throw up on him right then.

Yuriko stayed on the balcony for twenty minutes at best, not having worked enough that day to achieve mindlessness even with the booze helping. She knew what her next move was without knowing where the belief came from, and that's how she knew she wasn't lying to herself.

She let thoughts come to her and leave again, keeping only the ones that she needed for her goal of talking to Masami the next day. The first was that whether she was in love with Nino or not (and her drunk self didn't doubt it for an instant), her feelings for him were too deep to allow for anything casual.

The second was that the idea of asking Nino out for real made her lightheaded with shame and fear. The shame was for what felt like a betrayal of Masami, and the fear was of damaging her relationships with Masami and Nino. There was another negative feeling making things murky, too...

She drawled to herself, "You'd think with four days of my emotions being u-under construction, those'd be gone," then giggled helplessly.

One giggle turned into a snort, and it felt like that was the impetus for seeing what she'd been really working on for the past four days. She knew she had to talk to Masami, that much she could have guessed before the emotional hiatus, but what she hadn't been prepared for, what she hoped she was prepared for now, was the idea that Masami might say _yes._

From the first time she met Nino, she'd known she couldn't have him. Every part of her had, from the first tortured time she'd involuntarily pictured telling Masami about her feelings, both expected and thought she deserved for Masami to say no, that Yuriko wouldn't ever be allowed even to try to be with Nino, not if she wanted to stay friends with Masami. Even now, she was prepared for Masami to say something like that. She was also prepared to accept it and give Nino up completely.

She sniffled hard at the very idea of losing Masami and had to take a break from her realization to find a tissue in her purse and clean her nose out.

Grinning to herself, she tossed the crumpled tissue over the edge of the balcony. As she watched it fall she let herself imagine, for the very first time, telling Masami about her feelings for Nino and having Masami say yes, that it was all right, that Yuriko could act on those feelings and still be best friends with Masami.

It was hard. No amount of sake or days filled with working with numbers was going to make it an easy thing to imagine.

But Yuriko, moving to stare up at the deep blue and purple sky, imagined it with all her might.

~

She slept late the next day, trying to sleep through her hangover while also making it as close as she could to a time when Masami would be awake in Turkey. She'd received a couple emails from her best friend over her cocoon days, all of which made it seem like Masami was being challenged and fascinated by her work and her colleagues as the conference progressed. Waking up around noon to find another update, Yuriko felt a pang of guilt over not having enough emotional energy left over to take more interest in Masami's current efforts other than her uncomplicated feeling of pride.

Nino was nowhere to be seen as Yuriko left the house for a nutritious breakfast of fried gyoza, but when she came back, he was tucked into what she was coming to think of as his chair.

"Good morning," she said, her unexpected calm making her voice come out in a monotone. She kept walking toward her room, but when she reached the hallway she looked back at him. Nino met her eyes, widened his, and looked ostentatiously down at an invisible watch on his wrist, pointing out without words that it was well into the afternoon.

She was laughing as she reached her room, and on that wave of positivity, she called Masami.

After stuttering her way through some general greetings and checking in, Yuriko took a deep breath.

Masami was quiet, probably knowing her well enough that she could tell there was something important that needed saying. It hadn't been very subtle, considering Yuriko had tried to pronounce "Istanbul" ten times and wasn't sure she'd succeeded even once.

She wiped her cold hands on her comforter and steeled herself to say what might, to Masami, be unforgivable.

"Maa-chan... it turns out that I have some, um, persistent feelings for-for Ninomiya-san, and, if you, or if you, um--"

Masami interrupted mercifully.

"It's all right."

Yuriko blinked, wondering if Masami realized she was asking for permission to _act_ on those feelings. "No, I mean, is... can I, if you say, I'd like to, um, really want to but will understand--"

Masami laughed. "I said it's all right, Yuriri. Actually, Nino already called me."

Choking, Yuriko tried words out, but Masami just kept talking.

"It's weird, thinking about the two of you together, but it's also all right. Nino thought it was weird, too, and clearly you're seeing it the same way, so... doesn't that mean it's really, truly all right? For everyone?"

Yuriko flopped down on her bed and put a pillow over her head, and only then could she mumble, "I don't get it."

Masami sighed, sounding more serious. "I just think... if we all acknowledge the weird, doesn't that make it less weird? Like we're all on the same side and looking out for each other."

"I'm always on your side."

"And I'm grateful, you weirdo, and guess what? I'm going to say it straight-out: you have my blessing."

"You can't just..."

"You have my blessing, Yuriko."

"But I've loved him forever," she blurted out. It sounded anticlimactic after years of secret pining, but it was a relief to say it.

There was a long silence, and then Masami said, "I get that. I actually... I'm sorry, but you were like a nervous puppy around him all the time, I couldn't miss it. I thought it was better to let you be than drag it out--"

"Yes, oh god," Yuriko interrupted involuntarily, thankful for Masami's past kindness. She couldn't believe Masami had known, but with hindsight, she'd never been any good at hiding it.

"No, but I should have... I didn't realize that you kept your feelings after I'd gotten over mine. It was so hard when we broke up; he was the first guy I ever loved. It never occurred to me that you'd hold onto him for so long. Do I need to say it again? You have my blessing, and now that I've said it three times, you have to accept it."

"I don't know that anything'll actually happen," Yuriko said, stumbling over the words. She felt like she was existing in a different world than five minutes before.

"I told you he called me, and he's totally into you. Just don't do it on my bed, okay?"

"Oh my god, Maa-chan."

"Fine, fine, you can do it on my bed," Masami sighed. "But wash the sheets after!"

Yuriko laughed. "You are a terrible person."

"Aww, I miss you, too."

~

It was indescribably weird to have permission to like Nino. And now that Yuriko knew for sure that he liked her too, or at least enough to talk to Masami about her, it kind of felt like everything was settled.

Curled up in bed and watching mindless television on her computer, Yuriko knew that feeling was false. She'd never kissed Nino, or held his hand, or talked to him honestly about her feelings, let alone heard about any of his. The weirdness, even if Masami was right about it being all right, wouldn't go away just by talking about it, either.

Whether she was really hungover or just putting off the moment she finally collided with Nino, she fell asleep like that, her laptop warming her while it played unwatched episodes of variety shows on loop. Somehow, despite her anticipation, the blare of studio laughter, and the lingering effects of her friendship with the guy selling her sake the night before, it felt like the most restful sleep she'd gotten in ages.

When she woke up, everything was dark but the irrepressible glow of idols and comedians still going for laughs. She was hungry, and she was tired of waiting.

She'd waited so long for Nino without ever having hope. Waiting when she had hope seemed almost unforgivable, even if her feelings had needed the lull to adjust.

Nino, as if he'd been waiting in the same place all this time, was in his chair. He stared down at his notebook like it held all the secrets of the universe.

Yuriko considered asking him if he wanted to eat with her, but what came out of her mouth was, "Wanna sit on the balcony?"

He looked up at her, then rubbed his eyes like he'd been working too hard for too long. Then he put his notebook on the coffee table and she saw that the reason for his bleary eyes was the Nintendo DS he'd been hiding behind his work.

She grinned at him, and he shrugged unrepentantly. He stood and stretched languidly, giving her an excellent chance to ogle him from his bare ankles to the flash of skin when his shirt lifted, all the way up to the cute roundness of his mouth as he yawned.

"Shall we?" he asked, and he offered her his arm like they were going on promenade. It looked silly in his too-short pajama pants and over-sized sweater. She wanted to kiss him and sneak her chilly hands under his clothes.

On her way over to him, she grabbed a blanket from the couch, then another after a split-second's hesitation. They'd share one someday, and she was looking forward to it, but there was no need to rush.

When she slid her hand through the crook of his elbow, she had to press her face against his warm shoulder for a second, overwhelmed and trying not to giggle inanely, but the distance to the balcony was almost nonexistent. Soon enough they were sitting in their separate chairs with their separate blankets and staring up at the night sky.

Snuggled in with her blanket in her usual spot, Yuriko didn't even try for the peace that the hazy, shifting stars sometimes brought to her. The sky reflected the time of night, but for her, for Nino, it might be the start of a new day. She thought her heart might beat out of her chest.

She gazed out into the night and listened to Nino's quick breaths beside her. Knowing he'd talked to Masami about dating her made her patient enough to wait for him to act.

She could do it herself, of course--she liked being bold and she was feeling plenty brave right then--but she was curious to know what Nino would do. She also, selfishly, wanted to know the feelings she'd feel when this guy she'd pined after for seven years made a move on her.

The clouds scudded across the sky, revealing the faint sliver of the moon, and Yuriko sighed happily in anticipation. As if it were her own, she noticed Nino's breathing falter, and the next moment she felt a warm touch on her fingers.

Yuriko looked down just in time to see Nino take her hand in his.

She shivered, but not from the coolness of the night. Warmth radiated through her from Nino's touch, and after she'd basked for an endless second, she looked up and met Nino's gaze with all the feelings he was giving her bright and hot in her eyes.

His intent expression eased slightly as he gave her half a smile, but his own eyes were still dark and nervous. She tilted her head, considering him, then deliberately held his gaze and turned her hand to slowly, firmly lace her fingers through his.

His shoulders lost their tension as he looked down at their entwined hands, mouthing something to himself that she didn't catch. He looked comfortable now, and when he looked back up to her face, his expression was one she'd never seen him use with her before. There was amusement, but there was also tenderness.

He tilted his head back at her in imitation, and for a second the amusement dropped away to leave only his fondness for her visible in the lines around his eyes and mouth.

Yuriko squeezed his hand and leaned back in her chair with a long, contented exhale. When she looked back up at the sky, the moon was hiding again, but she wasn't in any hurry.

She sat there with Nino as they held each other's hands, and she stared into the sky with all the nervous joy of new love that she'd thought she'd never have.

~

Eventually, of course, even with new love to keep her warm, Yuriko was too cold to be outside any longer. She was about to suggest gracefully that they retreat inside, but before she could, her stomach said something for her.

Nino recoiled melodramatically, a laugh in his eyes though he kept his face deadpan. "Did that come from _you_?" he asked, pretending horror, but she noticed that he still held tightly to her hand.

She laughed, only a little embarrassed, and as if to join her, her stomach rumbled again.

"Dear lord," Nino whispered, as if to himself. "The romance of this is almost too much to take..."

"Are you going to make me some food then," Yuriko said easily, still grinning. "A girl's got needs, you know."

"Anything for you," he said lightly, and before she could recover from that, he lifted their joined hands to his lips and kissed her sweetly on the fingers.

Flabbergasted, she realized that this was all real, that she was actually, in real life, dating Ninomiya Kazunari. She resolved to hold onto it as long as she was able and to touch him as much as she could while she had him.

What she said to him was, "Omurice, please."

Nino didn't even blink. "With a ketchup heart? Like I said, anything for you."

"No," Yuriko said firmly. "Surprise me."

He laughed. "With ketchup?"

She tugged their hands to her side and kissed the back of his, then met his gaze. "And in general."

He leaned slowly toward her, thoughts of kissing in his eyes, before freezing with an arrested expression.

"Yuriko-chan, do we even have any eggs?"

~

It turned out they didn't.

They walked hand-in-hand to the nearest grocery store. Yuriko tugged Nino along, laughing when he grumbled like an old man with aching joints, and then, when he roused himself enough to trot along with her, stopped short so that their linked hands pulled him back toward her like a fish on her line.

Neither of them had bothered to change out of their lounge clothes, and Yuriko realized halfway to the store that she'd forgotten to brush her hair. The pale flash of Nino's slender ankles kept catching her eye as they walked along, and when they'd almost gotten to their destination, she couldn't resist any longer.

When they finally got to the eggs, Nino still hadn't stopped talking about the audacity of a woman who stopped in the middle of the street to bend over and grope his ankles.

"There are other places I would happily grope even in public, Nino-chan," Yuriko said, looking intently at the different cartons, and he took it as the threat it was and changed the subject.

"Do you have ketchup? Rice? Chicken?" he asked, reaching in and grabbing some eggs.

"Let's just assume we don't have anything." She thought for a moment, then added, "Other than our beautiful romance, I mean."

He sighed, sounding put-upon, but the words he muttered to himself weren't a complaint at all: "Do you really want our first kiss to be in a grocery store..."

She went red and swung their hands back and forth in a nervous motion. With how much she liked him and how comfortable they really could be together, she'd forgotten to be nervous for a while, forgotten that they still hadn't kissed, forgotten... just how much this all meant to her. Going to a supermarket with Nino to buy ingredients so he could make them a late dinner was like a dream.

"I--I think we can do better," she stuttered out, smiling hopefully when his chin snapped around so he could look at her face. "For a first kiss."

He went still, but then his eyes were confident as he leaned in to speak softly into her ear, "But after that, we can kiss anywhere."

Yuriko made a thinking noise, though her whole body was sparking, and pointed up to a corner of the ceiling. "That's a security camera."

"Anywhere without a security camera," Nino amended smoothly, and this time his lips actually brushed her ear.

"Let's shop quickly," she blurted out. He pulled her down the next aisle with his face turned forward, but she caught a glimpse of his quiet smile with every step.

~

It only came out as Nino was preparing the omelet that he still had a long way to go before meeting his deadline.

"It's really not that big a deal, Yuririn. Can I call you Yuririn? I still have over a week, after all." He deftly broke eggs into a bowl and began to whisk them.

"But I'm done with mine," she said uncomprehendingly. "What have you been doing?"

"Very important things. I got a new game, and it's not half-bad, Yuu-tan, and--is Yuu-tan all right?--that really takes precedence."

She giggled, then tried to lift her eyebrows at him in a haughty manner, then giggled again. "You're going to burn that if you don't turn down the heat," she scolded as he poured the eggs into her frying pan.

"Taka-chan, I know what I'm doing," he sighed, picking up a spatula. "I hope you don't mind if I call you Taka-chan, by the way."

She came over and wrapped her arms around his waist from behind, unable to help herself. She couldn't quite get the words out to express her happiness, and it probably would've been too heavy for the first day of their relationship anyway, but the idea of her boyfriend--her boyfriend, _Nino_ \--using affectionate nicknames with her made her heart hurt with pleasure.

"If I do burn the eggs, it'll be because some octopus is loose in your kitchen and grabbing onto me," Nino said lightly, but his free hand found one of hers and squeezed. "Ah!" he added, clearly scrambling for another pet name, and said weakly, "Yuri-nyan?"

She snickered, pressing her cheek against his spine, and drawled back, "Kazu-nyan," just to feel the way he shuddered. "Then how much of your script do you have left to write?"

He hesitated. "Half of it?"

She took an involuntary step back, but her arms didn't get the memo, so he had to step back with her. He chided, "The eggs will burn, Yosshi," and she hastily moved back with him toward the stove.

She thought about the first days of a relationship, and how weird it was to do all of it while they were living together. That, along with an exasperated, vicarious professionalism, decided her.

"Then we can't go on a date until you have three-quarters of it done," she said firmly.

"Yucchan!" he protested, but it sounded halfhearted. He probably didn't care that much about going on a date with her when he got to see her all the time at home, where he preferred to be anyway.

She saw the solution to that immediately. "And I'm not kissing you until we've been on a date."

This time the protest was much more heartfelt. "Yuri, can't we just--"

"I'll eat your omurice, Kazu, and then you're in quarantine until three-quarters done," she said, grinning to herself against his back.

"You're heartless," he grumbled, and she said, "On the contrary," and pressed a swift kiss to the back of his neck before escaping to her seat at the table. "Don't forget the ketchup surprise!"

~


	2. Chapter 2

~

What with the ketchup surprise turning out to be the word "ketchup", the omurice being delicious, and Nino resting his hand on her forearm for most of the meal, complete with extremely distracting stroking when she got absorbed in the food, Yuriko couldn't bring herself to enforce the quarantine on time.

Instead, they sat on her sofa, beginning cautiously apart and scooting closer with every passing minute, and watched a movie. She couldn't have named the movie, and was pretty sure they'd started watching it halfway through when Nino found it while flipping through channels, but her awareness of Nino deepened as she focused less and less on the screen and more on him and all the ways they could touch without it even being dirty.

They'd started out sitting chastely, their hands at their sides, until Yuriko started it all by sliding her hand a few inches to the left until their pinkies touched.

That one lasted several minutes, mostly because she was still, at that point, trying to figure out what was going on in the movie. It had an idol she liked in it, which made her think that she could probably remember a plot summary from the internet if only she had thoughts available for anything but Nino, and she figured it was heading toward romance, but otherwise she was only catching fragments due to her focus on that tiny part of her that was touching him.

In between breaths, Nino's hand moved, and the next thing Yuriko knew his arm was along the back of the couch and his hand was resting on her shoulder. She smirked to herself, thinking, _'Smooth.'_ She leaned her head back to rest against his arm and moved her own hand just enough that her abandoned pinkie was resting lightly against his thigh.

His hand brushed her neck, and hers lingered on his knee. They got closer. He played idly with her hair, and she turned so that her knees were pressed up against his thigh instead. For a kicker, she brought her other hand up to rest gently on his chest. At that he inhaled audibly, but they both pretended to be absorbed in the movie. When he stroked his hand down to her upper arm, letting it play teasingly up and down her sensitive skin, she just snuggled closer and rested her head on his shoulder, her own hand falling to his waist.

They were cuddling. She felt drunk with how wonderful it was.

She mumbled, "I'm enabling you," but it came out more smug than regretful.

"No, no," Nino said soothingly, and she felt his mouth touch her hair briefly. "This is very inspiring."

It was several enjoyable minutes later when his hand slid down her arm and under to lie on her hip. Yuriko hesitated, wondering just how risky she wanted to go when she was resolved on not kissing him yet, then threw caution to the wind and slipped her hand carefully under his shirt to rest warmly against his stomach.

Nino sucked in, surprised, then laughed as he let it pooch back out to normal lounging posture. "Now that's just distracting, Yuri-chan. After all, I'm trying faithfully to watch Jun-kun's movie."

She sat up a bit to look at him, surprised. "Jun-kun?"

He nodded, eyes bright on the screen. "That pretty one with the eyebrows is one of my roommates. He really pulls up the whole average of the apartment, I'm telling you."

"Average what?" she wondered, resting her head back on his shoulder. "Wait, you're roommates with the idol _Matsumoto Jun_?!"

Nino gestured at the television with his free hand like it was obvious that Jun's looks were what he meant, but what he said was, "Kindness, generosity, that sort of thing. We used to go on group dates sometimes when we could fish Leader out of the ocean, but he always put me to shame with how considerate he is, so I never had much luck."

Yuriko didn't say anything, thinking of how he'd given her space during her four days of emotional construction, how he'd made her omurice, how she'd never seen him sit on the couch, until now, because she'd told him one time that she liked working there. She'd hibernated for days without using any of the living room furniture, and she knew for a fact that the chair he'd stubbornly used the whole time instead was weirdly uncomfortable.

He went on, "But then Leader, that old man, he snagged Chiaki-sama, so maybe it's just that I was always kind of hung up on, well..." He cut himself off awkwardly.

She sighed and finished for him, "Masami." She took a deep breath, thinking about her best friend, then said bravely, "That's weird! I... I acknowledge it."

Under her hand, Nino's tense muscles eased, and then he laughed. Feeling Nino laugh was something she wanted to do all the time, Yuriko decided. "You're right," he said, and he darted carefully around to lay a smooch on her forehead. "It's weird."

Before much longer the movie ended, and Yuriko regretfully disentangled herself from Nino and stood. "I'll be busy tomorrow, Kazu-chan, so write. When you've got three-quarters done... I'll take you out to dinner that night to celebrate, okay?"

"It'll be tomorrow," Nino promised, taking her hand.

She snickered. "You're going to write a quarter of a movie in less than a day."

"So little faith," he sighed. "Would you believe it? I'm going to finish my game, too."

He smirked at her, and it was all she could do not to kiss him. She got out the words, "Good luck," and bolted for her room before she broke.

Before she could sleep, she had to roll around joyfully on her bed, but her excessive emotion meant she got tangled up her in her comforter. She flailed, only managing to get her head caught too, and then fell to the floor with a loud thunk.

She was still laughing when she heard footsteps stop outside her room.

"Yuri, are you okay?" Nino called through the door, sounding worried.

"Yes!" she yelled back, voice muffled by the comforter wrapped around her, and beamed in her temporary hidey-hole.

She was better than okay. She was wonderful.

~

Yuriko got up early the next day, had breakfast on her own and left some for Nino, whenever he emerged from Yuu's room, and left the apartment. She did some shopping, then went to a cafe to proofread the budget. Afterward, she had lunch with Oshima Yuko and Takei Emi, two promising young interns from the company with whom she was becoming friends. She'd slept on Yuko's lap once at a company karaoke party, which seemed to have broken down much of the difference in hierarchy between them, and Emi seemed willing to follow Yuko's lead when it came to informality.

She was deliberately mysterious when Yuko asked about the budget, but otherwise they had a lively conversation over sandwiches. Instead of retreating into reserve or mockery when Yuriko was weird, Yuko and Emi were good at laughing instead, and Yuriko got to hear all the company news she'd missed while she was gone, both professional and interpersonal.

Their discussion also reminded her that she needed to call Toma.

That thought lingered like a bad taste in her mouth, but she went shopping for groceries with a mostly light heart. She and Nino had been to the store just the night before, but they'd had omurice blinders on, and the kitchen really needed restocking if she was going to be home another week.

Nino was in his chair when Yuriko got home, but he barely looked up, just paused a fraction of a second before scribbling frantically in his notebook again. She noticed his tongue was peeking out of his mouth and had to smile and stare a moment, but then she went to put the groceries away rather than distract him from his mission.

There was still a lot of time before dinner, so she cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom, then attacked the bathroom. After neatening her room, she had little else to do, so she gave up putting it off any longer and called Toma.

He, of course, was understanding. It made Yuriko feel awful to hear him being so kind when she was backing out of their date, but it was better than lying to him by omission any longer, so she got through the conversation as best she could. Someday soon, she hoped, they could be friends.

She made that phone call on the balcony, and she stayed out there, thinking about various things, until the sun went down. She hadn't watched a sunset in a long time. Instead of the peace of watching the night sky, it made her think more passionately, which was rare for her. She was a person with deep feelings, but with a lot of surface calmness and cheerfulness (and weirdness, she guessed) on top of them, and feeling fiery things was an interesting change.

The door slid open behind her.

"I'm ready for my celebratory dinner, Yuri-chan," Nino's voice said, smug with a side of exhaustion.

Yuriko turned and looked at him. They could use the bags under his eyes as plates. "Take a nap first," she said huskily, and went back to watching the fire-streaked sky.

"Yes, ma'am," he said, but he gave her head a cheeky pat before leaving.

She came inside an hour later to find him passed out on the sofa with an arm over his eyes and his bare feet tucked between cushions. She felt the urge to let him sleep longer, but she was hungry, too, and besides, she really, really wanted to kiss him.

With those motivations in mind, she ambled over to the couch, turned her back to him, and sat down on his belly.

He yelped, arms flailing. She wriggled in place and enjoyed her moving seat.

"Yuri, I swear," he groaned, grabbing her hips. She stilled, caught off-guard by sudden arousal, and his mutters ceased abruptly.

"Let's go to dinner," she said, her voice a rasp, and he said, sounding strangled, "Let's."

~

She took him out for ramen, and they sat close together in a small booth and slurped noodles greedily. It was loud in the crowded restaurant, but they talked despite it, making each other laugh when their voices came out too strong in a sudden dip of room volume.

She told him about her job, though one of the things she liked about it was that it wasn't interesting, and he told her about his, though he refused to say there was any chance he wouldn't meet his deadline. She had to admit, if he could write a quarter of a movie in a day, he probably had it covered.

Yuriko talked to him about Yuu, and Yuu's boyfriend Okada, and how she missed Yuu since she'd basically moved out, but that it felt like going back to old times to live only with Masami again after a couple years of having to share her. Nino gave her updates on Aiba and Sho, and she learned about Ohno (Leader, it seemed), and the idol Matsumoto Jun, as well, both of whom Nino had met after his breakup with Masami. It seemed an interesting group of roommates to have, and she had to hide a smile several times because Nino was ranting on about something or other, either with praise or frustration, but his eyes would be shiningly fond no matter his tone.

"I'm telling you, Yuri-chan, Aiba-chan has found the world's weirdest girl." Nino paused a moment, assessing the person to whom he was speaking, and she saw him waver between her and Aiba-chan's girlfriend, but in the end he confirmed, "No, even weirder than you, I think. Her cheeks are pink _all the time_ \--"

"That's called blush," she said, pleased when he gave an offended sniff.

"I know that, but this is not normal, I swear... and she has poses."

"Poses?" This intrigued her. Having poses sounded like it could be fun.

He showed her the poses, and she laughed and repeated them back to him, and the rest of their conversation was punctuated by a cutely-poking-out tongue, or puffed cheeks, or an OK sign held up to one of their faces whenever they thought of it. She laughed so much her face started to hurt, and Nino was laughing, too.

The whole dinner, they were pressed up against each other, and it was all she could do not to steal a kiss. She could've done it easily and no one would have even noticed, she bet, but she was also enjoying waiting, and after their conversation in the grocery store, she was hoping for more romance.

It was just so hard to care about romance when she had Nino's body against her, his eyes sparkling as he told her a story about Aiba and Rola and their ridiculous, adorable love. His expressive lips telegraphed his every amusement, his underlying fondness, and also spoke something to her, deep down, something about how well his mouth moved and how soft it would be, how warm and responsive. That something manifested in her mind and body alike as a need to kiss him, and she thought he knew it, too. He kept swaying even more into her space as if to tempt her, those wicked eyes lit up from the inside.

Yuriko made sure to pout a lot just to torture him back, even at moments when pouting didn't make any sense, which was most of them.

They made it out of the ramen shop without kissing, just barely, and walked home down the dark, sparsely populated streets with Nino's arm around Yuriko's shoulders.

Dinner was over; they'd accomplished their first date. She wasn't sure if the date was over until they got home, though, or was it until they parted? The rules seemed blurry when they were already, if temporarily, cohabiting.

As they hit the lobby of her apartment building, she said impulsively, "If you walk me home, I'll give you a kiss at the door."

"I don't know," Nino hedged, but his arm tightened around her. "It's so far out of my way..."

She knew he was joking, but she looked around for a nearer, somehow romantic kissing location, only to sigh mournfully when she spotted one.

"If only the pool were open at night," she said, pointing at the locked door in a secluded corner of the lobby. "I've always wanted to swim in it, but Maa-chan won't go with me in the morning, it's packed with kids when I get home from work, then closes at 8pm."

Nino looked at her, an assessing look on his face. Then he smiled. "Yuri-chan. I can pick locks."

She chuckled. "Walk me home?" She was itching to kiss him and could about do it right there in the boring, unromantic lobby if he didn't hurry up.

He sighed like now he had to prove something, but she reserved judgment until he walked them over to the alcove and produced lock picks from thin air.

She clapped and laughed, then laughed more quietly when he shushed her with a very serious expression.

"This is a clandestine operation, as clandestine as it is romantic. After this you'll have to do the walking me home thing, because I will have exhausted my supply of romance for the month."

Despite how often Nino complained about having to do things, Yuriko doubted it, but she kept that to herself. She was going to give him _such_ a kiss if he opened that pool door for her.

~

As it turned out, Nino really could pick locks.

When he'd gotten the door open, she'd cheered so loudly his eyes had gone wide and she'd found herself dragged onto the tiled floor of the pool room with the door closed behind them before she could think twice. The pool wasn't that large, but with just the two of them there, and the room's lights off but for a few emergency lamps, it seemed a vast and echoing expanse even after she'd muffled her excitement.

Yuriko looked at Nino to find him looking at her. In silent accord, they looped their arms together and strolled around the pool as if they were a wealthy couple out on the town.

The moonlight streamed gently through the windows high up in the walls, which let the light in to grace the still water without offering anyone outside a view of the new couple. On their second turn around, Nino stopped so they were standing in the brightest patch of moonlight. He looked at her, his eyes soft, and started to bend his head to kiss her.

She smiled. "Kazu-chan, let's swim."

He sighed and rested his forehead on her shoulder. "Yuri-chan," he said against her. "My lips are going to fall off with all this wanting you."

She grabbed the hem of her shirt and tugged, moving him out of the way with her motion. She pulled it up and over her head, dropped it on the tile next to her feet, and stood there in her jeans and bra.

"Keep them on a little longer," she said as she watched his changing priorities slide across his face in a glazed sort of way. It didn't seem like he'd be fit for conversation a while yet, so she started shimmying out of her jeans as well.

She knew and was glad that bending over to do this made his view of her shirtless self even more provocative. Nino's breath was audible and very fast. When she got her jeans around her ankles, she stepped out of them after pulling off her shoes and socks. She straightened to stand in the moonlight in her underwear with Nino's gaze on her as hot as a touch.

Yuriko eyed the pool. "Wanna race?"

Nino let out a long, yearning sort of sigh. "Whatever it is, you win."

"Loser has to initiate the kiss, how about," she said, thinking it through as she spoke. Considering it was a bet that ended in kissing either way, she felt extremely wise.

He met her eyes, sending a thrill through her all the way to her toes. "I am more interested in a mutual sort of kissing, Yuri-chan. No deal."

She huffed a laugh and stepped closer to him temptingly. The tiled floor was cool against her bare feet. "Me too. But for five seconds of our very first kiss, I'd like to bask in it, you know? And since I'm going to win, I'll take it as my prize."

He didn't move, just tilted his head down as she neared him so that he could keep his eyes on hers. "Who says you'll win? I'd enjoy being lazy for those five seconds, as long as I still get to kiss you."

Yuriko looked at him very seriously. "I'm not sure I can even hold out five seconds, with your mouth." She reached up with one hand and dragged one finger along his lower lip. He was so very kissable.

"Again, who says you'll win," Nino said with strange tenderness, and he pressed his mouth to her fingertip.

She gestured at her state of dishabille. "I'm already ahead--"

"I'll participate like this," he said briskly, looking away as he thoroughly disappointed her. She'd been looking forward to him getting undressed.

"Fine," she said, sulky, and pointed across to the far side of the rectangular pool. "Down and back? Get set, go!" As she dove in she heard him make a surprised noise, and then she hit the water.

She hoped her tactic had gained her some time because she wasn't actually that strong of a swimmer. Her strokes felt clumsy, but the water was cool and refreshing, and the promise of Nino chasing after her only made it more fun. For the time it took to swim the length of the pool and back, she lived entirely in the moment.

Then she finished at the wall, flipped her hair back off her face, and opened her eyes to see Nino standing at the edge of the pool, not a drop of water on him.

He smiled at her. "Like I said, you win."

Her mouth dropped open, but before she could yell at him, she laughed instead. "I should've known when you wouldn't take off your clothes!"

He looked entirely happy with himself as he leaned down to offer her a hand out of the pool. She considered trying to yank him in, but he'd be expecting that, and she also didn't want to ruin anything in his pockets, like his phone.

Instead, she pushed backwards off the wall and glided a ways off, well out of reach. "As the winner, I'm going to bask now, Kazu-chan."

He stood up slowly, eyes on her. "In the water?" he said, deliberation in every syllable.

She retreated to the very center of the pool, as far from any wall as she could get, and didn't bother to answer with words.

Nino said conversationally, "I hope you appreciate how much I want to kiss you. If it were anyone else in this pool right now, I'd leave them here and probably find a way to lock the door behind me."

Given that he was unbuttoning and removing his shirt while he said this, Yuriko didn't pay all that much attention to the words. The tone, however, with its calm surface and heat underneath, seemed to throw the wide room into even more atmospheric anticipation. She watched him shrug out of his t-shirt, then take off his his shoes, socks, and finally his pants.

He wore boxer-briefs that were a garish red even in the gentle light, and she could tell he was getting hard. She stared appreciatively, feeling a thrill that it was because of _her_. Still, part of her remembered that this was probably why most people didn't get almost all the way naked for a mere first kiss: it made it so difficult to keep it to that.

"Just a kiss?" she said, voice low and husky. It wasn't that she didn't want more, but they were already moving too fast with the temporary living together. This relationship was more important to her than acting on all of her physical urges at once.

He answered, "There'll be no _just_ about it," and dove gracefully into the water.

She was mesmerized for a second, both at the sight of his body and the promise of his words, but she recovered enough to swim away toward the opposite wall just to be playful.

Nino swam under the water, moving toward her unerringly, and she didn't make any attempt to evade him once her back hit the cool tile of the ledge. She wanted this as much as he did, and in truth, she'd wanted it for far longer. When he broke the surface a few feet away, her heart seemed to stop.

He was pale and glistening in the unsteady moonlight. His wet black hair was plastered to his face, but he made no move to push it back, just advanced on her, dark gaze intent, until she could make out individual drops of water on his bare shoulders. She couldn't take her eyes off of him.

When he got close enough that he could have touched her, he rested his hands on the wall to either side of her body and kept coming, still not speaking with anything but the clear, determined look in his eyes. With his chest inches from hers, he paused, but it wasn't hesitation. As soon as she looked up from the moon-skimmed shadows of his collarbones, he kissed her.

His mouth was cool and soft, tasting faintly of chlorine, and her eyes flew shut at the first knee-buckling impact of the kiss. It wasn't rough, but it felt _important_ , like it changed something between them just because of the way their lips met and matched. She'd been right about his mouth, about how he'd kiss her, about how much she wanted him--and just then, just when she was about to lose herself in how good it all felt, she remembered that now she'd be able to kiss Nino all the time. Her lips parted as the ache of having him swept through her, and he pressed even closer with a satisfied sound of his own, like he couldn't imagine enjoying this more and wasn't planning to stop anytime soon.

She wasn't touching any part of him but his mouth, but it seemed like she could feel his whole body from his ankles (she could still remember how they'd felt under her hands) to the surprising breadth of his shoulders. It was so different kissing someone she loved, kissing _Nino_ , because she loved every part of him already, even the ones she hadn't touched yet, because it was him. As they deepened the kiss together, all thoughts of basking forgotten, her years of unrequited love dropped away along with every weirdness. She felt his kiss reverberate through her and fill her up with wanting him instead.

They were wet, unclothed, and making out, which made it extremely difficult not to move things right along to sex. Some small, cautious part of her held her libido back, but with his mouth on hers, she could at least translate her every desire right into their kissing. The urge to drag her hands down his back became her tongue sliding into his mouth, and when that made him groan, she wanted to wrap her legs around his waist. It could be so easily accomplished in the water, but instead she pulled back to nip at his lower lip, dizzy at the fullness of it. He moved against her, silky and hot, and when he licked at her open mouth, she stifled some truly filthy mental imagery with an ungentle suck on his tongue.

At that he made a growling sort of noise and crowded so close to her that his body, finally, pressed right up against hers. The chill of the pool faded, replaced by the warmth of Nino, Nino kissing her like she was everything he wanted. His tongue was in her mouth, her hips cradled his obscenely, and if she just took off her bra she'd be able to feel--

She only realized her hands had found their way into his hair when he stopped kissing her. She let go guiltily, trying not to pant into the hushed room, but Nino didn't move away. He was still pressed up against her in that delightful, maddening way, and she opened her eyes to see him staring at her, eyes heavy-lidded and dark with wanting her. Gathering her courage, she reached up to slide a finger across his brow, taking the damp hair with it so that she could see his face as clearly as possible in the half-light.

"Do we need to stop?" she said, words a regretful muddle, and he shook his head. She couldn't tell if that'd been disagreement or him trying to clear his thoughts. Given how his hips were nudged against her, she felt pretty sure that if he was trying to calm down, he wasn't succeeding.

At last Nino sighed and stepped back in the water. "A swim is like a cold shower, right?" he said, mostly to himself, but the grin he gave was entirely for her.

Yuriko wanted more kissing, wanted everything Nino would give her, but she was also filled up to overflowing with happiness with her boyfriend, their first date, their first kiss.

"And our first swim," she mused aloud. "Our first time seeing each other mostly naked."

At that, his eyes dropped helplessly to her breasts, but he jerked them away and made off for the far wall. She waited until he got there and turned around to look at her across the water.

She said mischievously, "Our second kiss...?" and dove after him.

They took turns chasing each other around the pool, tallying their second, third, fourth kisses. They stopped counting long before they stopped kissing, but it'd turned playful, romantic, with far more splashing around than groping. They laughed and kissed and swam in the moonlight, everything and everyone else forgotten in the pleasure of each other's company.

~

Yuriko was prepared to skulk upstairs with Nino in whatever wet, disheveled, but somehow not pornographic manner they could put together, but Nino wouldn't hear of it. He left her in the pool and nipped upstairs in his t-shirt and pants, having used his button-down shirt as a makeshift towel, and brought her back two of the real things.

She looked at the big, fluffy towels, then at him, wondering why there were two and whether she was going to climb out of the water in her undies and give him a show. Before she could act on any of her impulses, he draped one of the towels around his shoulders and held the other one out, spread in the air, and ostentatiously closed his eyes.

He said solemnly, "Your towel, madam."

She felt like she should probably laugh, but she was caught in one of her moments of intense affection for him and could only manage to stare. He really did have his eyes closed, though, so she got through the moment as best she could while getting herself out of the pool and into that inviting towel.

Finally she said in a monotone, "Thank you," just as Nino wrapped the towel around her and turned her to face him. She looked at him, knowing her heart was in her eyes for him to see, but he was busily getting the other towel free to put over her head and begin drying her hair.

"You could be my manager," she mumbled, blinking back the excess emotion. "How are you with a hairdryer?"

"I think I'd be excellent," Nino said. She tried to hear what he left unsaid though it was very distracting to have him petting her hair with the towel so cozily.

"Ah." She remembered the thing he needed to do that was more important than blow-drying her hair. "Your script."

His motions didn't falter, but he made a noise of assent. "I keep trying to round up, since three-quarters is really pretty much done already, but no one else seems convinced."

"Thank you for going to get the towels," she said, stepping back a bit so she could look him in the eye without immediately needing to kiss him again.

"I thought it best I didn't see you go upstairs in a wet shirt. I'm trying to exercise restraint, you know." He grinned at her.

She tilted her head back at him. "Why?" She knew her reasons for feeling like sex needed to wait until they'd been together a little longer, but she wasn't at all sure of his.

Giving a thinking sort of sound, he rubbed his chin. His hair was still wet, and the moonlight was a muted glow on his pretty skin, and for a second Yuriko flashed back to that moment in the pool when he'd come toward her to kiss her for the first time. She shivered.

Nino wrapped an arm around her towel-clad shoulders and tugged her into his side. "Hm, I guess it's that I don't want to be thinking of anything but you when we get there." The implication that he felt they still had some sort of progress to make before they slept together, even if the progress was only the length of time they were dating, was reassuring to her in that it meshed with her own reasons, but it also made her impatient.

But he wasn't done. He said in the same matter-of-fact tone, "And I think it'll take a couple days the first time, honestly, with you. Not to give you weird ideas about my endurance in any area, and a lot of it would just be lying around in bed if I had my way, but I think..."

She nodded seriously. "Basking, in that context, is better done post-coital."

"So I have to write this script, I guess," he concluded, sounding put-out. "Normally I'd wait a few more days before the big push, but other bits of me might start falling off through wanting you--"

Again, she nodded, repeatedly. Maybe too many times. "I am very fond of all your bits. Let's go so you can get to work."

Back in her apartment, they separated a while to dry off and get changed into pajamas, then found each other again in the living room.

Looking at Nino leaning in the doorway toward the kitchen, Yuriko sat deliberately on the sofa. Nino, even more deliberately, came over to sit in the uncomfortable chair.

"Ahh, are we talking, then," she said, not exactly disappointed. She might never get enough of touching Nino, but she knew she'd never get enough of talking with him either.

"I don't want sleeping together to be a reward for me finishing my script," he said bluntly.

She nodded, having had that thought herself. "How about we wait until we're not living together?" she suggested. "I'd really like to bring you home with me... to a place where you don't also sleep, but just for--just to have you."

He folded himself deeper into the chair, thinking. She took the opportunity to admire the way he tucked his legs under himself, as well as the drying fluffiness of his hair.

He said, "I'm here another six days. Or, well, that's when my deadline is up, and I don't think I can wrangle any more time." He cut himself off, looking alarmed, and interjected, "Ah! I mean, I could, of course, because of my charm! Which is boundless. But this time, I don't want to. For obvious reasons?"

She chuckled. "Yes, Kazu. Obvious reasons."

"I'll move out when I've finished my script, then, and we can figure it out from there, but... for those six days, what are the new rules?"

"Kissing," Yuriko said immediately, then remembered the whole deadline thing. "But only between the hours of eight and nine pm, um, if you've written enough that day to feel like you can take a break."

"How will that be judged?" Nino said, eyes sparkling. "I'll be very motivated for the answer to be yes."

She kept her face deadpan. "We'll use the honor system."

"Damn," he whispered loudly, as if to himself. "It's still early enough in our relationship that I have to try to have honor."

Her heart fluttered in a distinctly unruly fashion. _Relationship._

"Any rules about the kissing itself?" Nino asked. After a moment of her not catching his drift, still dazed by the casual mention that they were in a _relationship_ , he waggled his hands at her in a meaningful manner. "Anything off limits?"

"Whatever feels good," she answered instinctively. "As long as we keep our clothes on. Which sounds like a rule I already hate."

"I don't want to suggest it," he said, and he was indeed frowning like the words were being pulled out of him. "But we could go swimming again."

She grinned at him. "Too much of a hassle for you, Kazu-chan?"

"It's cold, and you have to take off all your clothes, and then you're just unendingly _wet._ "

"Next time we'll bring towels," she said, ignoring his complaints. "And swimsuits... maybe."

He grumbled, "And it's not even between eight and nine pm right now, and I'll have to do so much writing to even earn my measly hour of kissing, and now you're going to drag me swimming again and in _swimsuits_ \--"

"Want a goodnight kiss to seal our deal?" she offered, all innocence, and he immediately changed his tone.

"Yes, let's; it's a good deal, after all, and in need of sealing," and with that he was over to the couch and bending his head to kiss her.

She cupped his face, enjoying the feel of him, and kissed him sweetly.

"Goodnight, Kazu-chan."

He straightened, pushing up his sleeves in a determined fashion. "Sleep well. I'll be writing hard for you."

"I'm sure the people paying you would be glad to hear it," she said blandly, but she had to steal just one more kiss before she could let him go.

She had a feeling she'd be breaking her own rules a lot in the days to come.

~

Yuriko woke up early the next morning with an unsettling realization.

She wanted to go back to work.

It wasn't that she missed her job, exactly, or even her coworkers, though she would be pleased to see some of them after a while without. It was that she missed all of it: breakfast with Masami, going to work, the boring thrill of numbers, eating lunch in the cafeteria with Yuko and Emi, slacking off in the afternoons once she'd gotten enough done, then home again, where it'd preferably be Masami's turn to cook dinner.

She missed her routine. And she missed Masami.

Still, she decided to give herself another day to be sure. After all, it wasn't like going back to work would bring Masami to her any earlier, and she had more than a week until her deadline was up.

Plus, she wasn't yet tired of seeing Nino constantly. After a solitary breakfast, she came out of the kitchen to find that he'd made it down the hall and into the uncomfortable chair before falling back asleep with his notebook in his lap and one hand still clutching his pencil.

Telling herself she was a selfless person to wake Nino up like this so that he could work, Yuriko tugged the notebook away to lay it on the coffee table and carefully climbed into Nino's vacated lap.

He didn't wake up. She'd been expecting him to stir at once, or that she'd find he hadn't really been asleep at all, but instead his breathing stayed deep and even despite the way she was shifting to try to find a comfortable position on top of him.

She ended up sitting sideways across his thighs with her legs hooked over the side of the chair, her shoulder leaning against Nino's chest. She rested her head against the back of the chair right next to his before letting it tip slowly, slowly forward to press her forehead against his soft hair.

She didn't know when he woke up, but it was long enough that she was starting to feel drowsy herself before his arms came up to settle around her waist. She heard the pencil drop to the floor. They sat like that without talking until she started feeling guilty for keeping him from his writing, even if he would've been asleep without her, but as she tensed to get up, Nino spoke.

"Please don't leave."

Just the sleepy tone would've been enough to melt Yuriko, especially when it was Nino using that sincere voice, but the words made her want to wrap her arms around his neck and never let go.

He sighed, settling more comfortably against her, which did nothing to prepare her for what he said next. "After Masami and I broke up, I dated a lot of people."

Yuriko tensed again, but all she said was a drawled, "Really."

"Every few months we'd go on one of those group dates, and more often than not I'd find someone there and latch onto them for five or six weeks and tell myself it was forever."

He was speaking quietly, a hint of sleep still in the rasp of his words, and Yuriko took a deep breath and tried to find the calmness inside of her, the calmness where she never lied to herself.

She said, "It's a little painful to hear that."

"I was young and desperate," Nino said, and it wasn't an apology. "I thought if I didn't find someone I loved more than Masami, everything might as well be over."

She tucked her nose into his neck and spoke against his skin. "I like getting to know you..."

He huffed a little laugh. "But?"

"Is there a reason you're bringing this up now?"

He was silent for a moment. She could feel his heartbeat thumping in his throat. At last he said, "I stopped after a few years. Whenever a relationship ended, I thought it meant I'd never be happy with anyone again, and for a while I'd give up... then find someone new and start over. I guess I'm bringing it up because I'm thinking about it in a new light now that I'm with you."

She pressed her lips against his pulse, trying not to rush him even though her own heart was racing in a way that wasn't entirely pleasant.

"Because with you, it's all good," Nino said, then laughed at himself. "No, maybe not all good, but it all seems worthwhile. I'm looking back and realizing that after Masami, nothing ever seemed worthwhile unless it lasted forever, and then nothing ever did."

"So you're saying we're not forever," Yuriko said, trying not to chuckle. She didn't know why she found that reassuring instead of crushing.

"I'm saying that I want to be with you even if it's not," he answered, and he ducked and twisted awkwardly just to drop a kiss on her lips. "And that because I'm not desperate to avoid it ending, I'm ... I'm really with you, you know? Even with weirdness and deadlines and trying to keep our hands off each other--"

She gave his chest a bit of a grope to punctuate his words.

He laughed happily, seemed to wake up completely as he did. "This is good, right? It's just been a long time for me, that's all, since it's been this good."

Yuriko, flush with her own happiness, looked straight into herself with the knowledge that he meant since he'd been with Masami, but she didn't find the sting. He liked being with her. She thought it was good, too.

She nodded in answer, feeling him let out his breath contentedly at the motion. She smirked. "Kazu, is waking up your time for talking about feelings?"

He leaned his head against hers sweetly. "I don't know what you're talking about, Yuri."

She asked abruptly, "Do you think you could carry me to the couch?"

He paused, either with surprise or considering the question, she didn't know, but she waited without worrying. He knew she was odd and liked being with her anyway.

"I'd be willing to try," Nino said slowly.

"But?"

"Ugh, maybe waking up really is a time to talk about feelings. I actually have some back problems; it's not too big a deal, but there it is."

He was very still under her now, all stiff muscles and sharp angles, and she wondered just how he thought she was going to react.

"Ah well," she said mildly. "Nobody's perfect."

He squeezed her so suddenly that she actually squeaked. "I'll trade you a piece of information for a kiss."

"Wait a second," she said, realizing. "You already had one and you haven't written anything yet today!"

"It's something you'll want to know, but I'd only say it now, since we're talking about such deep and meaningful things."

Nino's voice was regaining its sharpness, making her, conversely, want to kiss him even more.

"All right, go," she said suspiciously.

He whispered in her ear, "That dratted swimming actually made my back feel a lot better."

Despite how he was treating it lightly, she could feel that he'd tensed up some again. He must have really hated talking about his health problems, so she didn't say anything with words, just turned her head and kissed him.

He sighed into her before kissing her back, and it wasn't a sleepy sort of kiss, but rather intently affectionate. She could feel his body easing under her as he forgot any discomfort, physical or otherwise, in the pleasure of her touch. Thinking about him willingly showing his vulnerability in front of her made her kiss him even more deeply.

After a while, she pulled back to say, a little too loudly into the quiet room, "You need to write that stupid movie so that you can move out and we can have sex."

He didn't laugh, just kissed her again swiftly before saying, "It's going to be a groundbreaking film, Yuri-chan, but it does stand between us getting naked so you're right, it's the worst."

"Write it," Yuriko said firmly. She extricated herself from his lap and stood over him menacingly. "Write it!"

"You're right, you're right," Nino said amiably, but she could see he was still looking at her with bedroom eyes.

She crossed her arms over her chest, irritated at the inevitability of it all. "I'm going out, and tomorrow I'm going back to work. No more kissing until our rules are satisfied, either!"

"You're pretty bossy," he said, but the way he said it made it sound like an entirely appreciative compliment. She narrowed her eyes at him. Maybe even a pickup line, considering the smug tilt of his lips.

Then he laughed, waving his hands in front of his face as if to erase his last words. "Just kidding, Yuri-chan! I'll write it, I swear, so work or not at your ease, and leave my writing--and my honor system--to me."

She stifled the irritated desire to say _one more kiss_ and turned on her heel to go get dressed for the day instead.

~

Yuriko ended up going to a goat petting zoo cafe. She got handed a flyer for it on her way to the subway, which she'd been intending to take to go to her and Masami's old neighborhood where she could linger in her old favorite cafe. She'd whiled many an hour away in that cafe thinking about Nino and trying to get rid of her feelings for him back when he'd been dating her best friend.

She thought it'd been a healthy impulse, actually, to revisit past pain in order to move on more cleanly, but she didn't hesitate to switch her plans after looking down at the flyer in her hand.

Instead of thinking about serious things, she spent her morning petting goats and drinking watery coffee. All of the metal tables had bite marks on them. She thought it might be her new favorite place.

When she went home, she wanted to ask Nino if he thought she could keep a goat in her apartment, but she wrote it on a post-it note and stuck it on the inside of her door to remember to bring up between eight and nine at night instead.

She lazed and watched television until it got dark out. She watched most of a drama starring Matsumoto Jun and had to write notes to herself and add them to the door frequently because she had so many questions she wanted to ask Nino, like what kind of expressions the idol Matsumoto Jun made when he woke up in the morning.

Before emerging for dinner, she emailed Masami, letting herself ramble on in all directions without much editing, and smiled to herself at the thought that Masami's trip was half over. When she made her way to the kitchen, however, she took one look at Nino (writing angrily at the table, tapping out a rhythm with one foot, biting his lip, and running a hand through his hair all at the same time) and kept walking. She went out for dinner and decided not to come home until 7:59pm. She had gyoza again, three different kinds, which helped her to stop thinking about time passing so slowly.

In the entryway when she got home, Nino was waiting. They were kissing before she even stepped out of her shoes.

Yuriko mumbled into Nino's mouth, "Let's kiss everywhere."

He grabbed her hips, making a winded sort of noise, and moved to stare at her. "But I thought we were waiting until--"

She laughed, "Oh, I meant... in the apartment." Then she inadvertently pictured kissing Nino _everywhere_ and went hot, so her next words came out toneless from the restraint of not yanking off all of his clothes at once. "Since you'll be moving out, and then Maa-chan'll be back, and I want memories of us kissing everywhere. In the apartment."

"Memories," he said, looking both flushed and wary. "You know that stuff I said this morning, I didn't mean I wanted this to end any time soon, right?"

She flopped a hand out dismissively. "It's for when you're not here. So no matter what I'm doing, it's somewhere I can remember us kissing."

"I wish your apartment were bigger, then," he said, and he used his hands on her hips to maneuver them up against the wall. "Let's start here. I don't think we've quite gotten it yet." As he trailed off, he leaned in, and then his mouth was back on hers.

She kissed him, then mumbled, "Here," kissed him, then mumbled, "and the balcony," then kept alternating kisses and words into his mouth until she'd listed everywhere she could think of, from the kitchen table to "the bath, but not until we've had sex, don't you think". Nino was making frustrated noises by the time she finished, but he was persistent: he kept his attention on kissing her through the whole list.

It was only when she paused and tried to think of another place that he paused, too. "Yuri-chan. You do know you have neither a hot tub nor a fireplace?"

"Eh, we already did the pool," she said, and she kissed him briefly because it was addictive. She imagined away some of his clothes and kissed him again, then stipulated, "But the fireplace is a must. And Maa-chan's room..."

"... is a no," Nino finished firmly.

"Maybe," she said, grinning at him.

That night they made out on the balcony for nearly an hour before Yuriko remembered they'd planned to move around and hit more places on her list, but she couldn't bring herself to have any regrets about it at all. With ten minutes left before Nino was supposed to return to writing, she suggested a quick dip in the pool, but no amount of pouting would convince Nino.

"I don't write well while wet," he said.

When she tried telling him that she would dry every inch of him personally, it only led to more kissing, and then their time was up.

~

Yuriko went back to work the next day. It was, comfortingly, entirely the same, though it was strange to leave home without Masami there and come home to find her still in Istanbul after all. She worked the rest of the week, and it took until Friday for her coworkers to lessen in their voluble surprise over her early finish on the budget. It didn't end entirely, and she thought it might be a long time before it did, but it eased up enough that she wasn't as hard-pressed to avoid the urge to shove someone into a wall.

She and Toma exchanged smiles and nods as they passed each other, but she didn't force the issue by talking to him yet. His smiles seemed genuine, though, so she thought it wouldn't be long.

Nino didn't join her for breakfast any day before work, but Yuriko always woke up with enough time to dress, eat, and go find Nino and cuddle him gently awake so he could kiss her goodbye. She found him on his bed, on his chair, on the couch, and one day, after an increasingly bewildered search, on the balcony.

Coming home, she left him alone until the designated time, and a couple nights she made that easier on both of them by going out to eat with friends, including once with Yuu. She immediately decided to see her friend more often, Yuu's medical internship, boyfriend, and basically moved out status notwithstanding.

As it turned to eight o'clock, Nino would find her. By Friday, they'd crossed off every location on her mental checklist, even the fireplace. Nino had been a little embarrassed when he turned his laptop around to show her the full-screen video of a roaring fire, but it had been one of Yuriko's favorite Nino-kisses yet. She didn't manage to coax him into the swimming pool again at all that week, but he offered every night to break her in so she could swim if she wanted. She saved that idea for another time, preferring to keep her memories of the pool as a place with Nino in it.

Also by Friday, though it gave him an irritable twitch in his shoulders and intense dark circles under his eyes, Nino finished his script.

She came home from dinner at 8:01, had her mouth on his by 8:02, but didn't hear about him meeting his deadline until 8:40. They'd only made it as far as the living room floor and had been entwined there more than half an hour with cushions to ease Nino's back and Yuriko straddling his hips as she kissed him because that's where she wanted to be.

His hands were on her breasts when she had and acted on the impulse to ask about his script.

"Oh, I sent it in an hour ago," Nino said, flashing her the briefest smile before looking back at his hands, which were doing wonderful things to Yuriko even through her shirt and bra. She bit down on a gasp and pushed back with her hips, gratified to hear his stifled moan, then processed his words.

"You're... done?" she said, feeling like her brain was malfunctioning.

"I'm moving out at 9:01," he said, raising up momentarily to steal a quick, wet kiss. When he rolled back onto his cushions, making her wobble on top of him, he looked winded but incredibly pleased.

"Careful," she said, thinking through all this new information as she spoke. "Too many kisses like that and your one-pack will turn into six. Your stuff?"

"My bag's by the door." He was still watching his hands on her body, with said hands being more talented than she could even think about, especially considering pretty soon they'd be on her without any barrier at all. He traced his hands around, following the lines of her bra, until one deft hand was resting over the clasp. "Is it all right, Yuri-chan, if the shirt stays on?"

"No," she said, preoccupied, then changed her mind. "I mean, yes, but then no hands, because you need to move out promptly... if you're out by nine tonight, then at nine tomorrow night, after going out to dinner? I could bring you home and you'd have been moved out for a whole day, so..." She trailed off, looking down at his face. "Are you taking my bra off or what?"

"No hands? Do you mean I can only look, but with the shirt, and also can we get hamburgers tomorrow? It's what I usually get after finishing a script since the first time, when Aiba-chan treated me."

She felt him unclasp her bra in one easy movement despite neither being able to see it or put his hand on it directly. It was impressive enough that she had to clap and laugh, which made him grin at her. She spoke with her laugh lingering in her voice.

"Hamburgers, fine, everything else, whatever, we only have ten minutes left before you move out so let's prioritize. I'll show you," she said. She took her bra all the way off without moving her shirt enough to show a single inch of extra skin, which made him applaud in turn. Then she leaned down, making sure to resettle herself over his hips to have him groan helplessly with want, and pressed herself against his chest.

She watched his face as he felt not only her hips snug against his, but her breasts against his chest, and chuckled at the look of intense abstraction that formed there.

"Ten minutes," he got out, sounding strangled, and she nodded, pleased, and kissed him.

Ten minutes until he moved out, and a day and ten minutes until they were officially living apart. She couldn't wait for the time to be up. At the same time, she wanted those ten minutes to last forever.

~

They were at the door, his bag in his hand, and kissing each other goodbye at nine sharp when Yuriko had a thought.

She squeezed Nino's wrist until he complied and dropped the bag, then pulled him by that same wrist from the entryway, through the living room, and onto the balcony. It was a move complicated by the fact that he'd already put on his shoes, but after he'd fallen to his knees by the door it was pretty easy for him to reach back and pull them back off.

It was also easy for him to complain and ask questions, but she said merely, "Let's make it 9:05pm tomorrow," and kept to her plan.

Once she had him on the balcony, she maneuvered them so they had their backs to empty space, took out her phone, and prepared to take a picture.

"I see," Nino said, suddenly all agreeable, and by the time she could see them on her screen to aim, he was smiling adorably complete with his arm around her shoulder and peace signs.

She smiled naturally and took the picture. After examining it critically and wishing she'd thought to take it at sunset instead, she said, "I'm sending this to Maa-chan and telling her our honored guest is ending his stay with us today."

"Your inn has been very good to me," he said and gave a tiny bow.

He still hadn't removed his arm from around her, and for a few minutes which Yuriko knew she might want back the next night but certainly couldn't bring herself to give up right then, they stood there leaning against each other in the cool night air, the sky behind them like a backdrop just for them.

A picture reply arrived from Masami.

As soon as she saw it, Yuriko laughed, then looked at Nino. His smile at the picture turned to confusion at her expectant look.

"Kazu, don't you see? She's giving a peace sign _and_ a thumbs-up. That's two hands, you know--"

"Yes, I can count," he interrupted.

"--which means she must have set a timer on the camera, just so she could send both to us!" she finished triumphantly. "Oh Maa-chan, my darling."

"Or," Nino started, speaking slowly like he wanted her to understand something. "It seems possible that she had someone else take the picture."

Yuriko frowned. "Buzzkill," she muttered, peering at the picture, then shouted, "Ha! Look, behind Maa-chan, there's a mirror, and look, right here, that smudge of black, that is the camera, and look, or fail to see, a person holding it. Ha!"

He said calmly, "I heard your ha the first time," but when she peered up at him, he was grinning at her. "I'm glad you were right, Yuri-chan."

She smiled smugly. "One more kiss."

It was more like four, and they'd have to wait until 9:20 the next night if they wanted him moved out for a full 24 hours, but by half-past nine Yuriko was alone in the apartment, just as she'd thought, when waking up that first day, she would be the entire time.

It felt strange now, but it wasn't without its perks. For the couple hours before she went to bed, she planned to bathe unhurriedly, watch the rest of her drama on the couch while wearing only a towel, and eat copious snacks, the wrappers of which she would leave strewn about to be picked up the next day.

As she undressed, she got a message from Nino that said simply, _Kissing withdrawal_. She texted back fondly, _Buck up_.

When she finally got out of the bath, into her towel, and onto the couch, she received another message, this one with the words, _Aiba-chan's crying because I'm back_. She responded at once: _What about the idol Matsumoto Jun? Has he heard about our exclusive inn because he would certainly be a VIP guest_.

To: Yuriko  
From: Kazunari  
 _Jun-kun's allergic to inns. Hamburgers tomorrow, pick me up at seven?_

Yuriko sent back agreement, smiling as she ignored Nino's ridiculous lie. It did make it seem fitting that she was distracting herself from their waiting period by looking at said Jun-kun's beautiful face, though, and she watched her drama and ate her snacks with what might have been off-putting gusto if anyone had been there to witness it.

But at long last, she was alone, and she had nearly 20 more hours to enjoy it.

~


	3. Chapter 3

~

Yuriko's Saturday was unremarkable and she had a wonderful time doing nothing. She didn't wear a bra all day, and she ate breakfast and lunch on the couch, the first with a variety show and the second with manga. It was lazy and a little gross and entirely satisfying.

She took a shower around five o'clock and fantasized with great anticipation the whole time.

Afterward, she lay in bed a while, naked, and tried to picture Nino there with her. The nervousness was almost enough to get her to hide some of the weirder things in her room, but not quite. She was also so excited that she had to keep pinching herself to remind her body to just _wait a little longer._

She put on a simple dress with argyle leggings underneath and finished it off with a cardigan and oxford shoes. She left the apartment profoundly aware that the next time she came in it would be with Nino and without any of their self-imposed restrictions.

Nino had sent her his address and the address of his preferred post-deadline restaurant, and they were so close together that it was a little silly that she was going to pick him up, especially since she wasn't even driving. He'd been so cute about it, though, in wanting her to come get him, that she hadn't quibbled. It also meant she got to see him for an extra ten minutes or so and it was early enough in their relationship that she was possessive of every chance.

He buzzed her in to come up, and she rang his doorbell. When the door opened, the familiar face that greeted her wasn't Nino's.

"Ah!" she said, pointing at the figure in the apartment as her eyes went wide. "It's Sakurai Sho!"

The handsome man blinked at her, then called over his shoulder, "Nino! A little warning might have helped!"

"No, no, no," Yuriko said, insinuating herself past Sho and into the apartment. "It's just that you look so different on TV, I never put it together that the n-newscaster Sakurai Sho was my old buddy _Sho-chan._ Do you still have your piercings...?"

He squinted at her face, then stepped back in alarm as she tried to lift his shirt to check his bellybutton. "Ninooo!" he called again, this time in distress, and Nino appeared from around a corner as if by magic.

"Oh, Yuri-chan. You remember Sho-chan, I see?" he said suavely, ignoring Sho's flapping hands.

"I do," she said sedately, as if she hadn't just tried to bare a stranger's stomach. "Also I know him from changing the channel when the news comes on."

Sho's hands stilled in midair, then returned to his sides. "Yuriko-chan? Masami's friend from way back?"

Nino said blithely, "And my girlfriend. Bye, Sho-chan! I'm not coming home tonight!" He took Yuriko's hand and tugged her out the door as Sho spluttered.

"He's not as stuffy as he looks on the news," Yuriko whispered loudly just before the door shut. As she'd planned, Sho heard her, and she enjoyed his shouted _oi!_ through the door along with Nino's pleased guffaw next to her.

They walked to the restaurant holding hands. Nino pointed out various things about his neighborhood, like the gym where Aiba and the idol Matsumoto Jun worked out (Sho apparently lifted weights at home "to re-inflate his air muscles"), the fishing supply shop where Ohno worked sometimes if the weather was too bad to be out at sea, and the convenience store which had the most reliably full shelf of marked-down food.

Yuriko listened, smiling at Nino's enthusiasm, and held tightly to his hand.

The burger place was kitschy and extremely cheap. Yuriko bought them two cheeseburgers and some fries to share, and Nino munched on his happily as she told him about the drama she'd watched of Jun's. After she finished relating her personal highlights, he told her that he'd seen it already but that he always liked hearing people praise "our J".

Their knees touched under the table, and she would have been touching him in other ways, too, but the burgers were pretty greasy and if she tried to hold hers one-handed, half the condiments seemed to spill out. Nino had the way of eating his down to a science, she noticed. She ended up eating more of the fries as he finished her burger for her, an arrangement which satisfied both of them.

Afterward, it was still far too early for Yuriko to take Nino home with her according to their plan, so she ordered them a milkshake to share as they loitered in the little shop and talked.

Yuriko slid an arm around Nino's waist, and Nino rested a hand low on her inner thigh where no one could see. They traded sips on the straw and told each other about their childhoods and other boring things like that, the kind of stuff Yuriko generally found, well, boring... but not when it was Nino. He told her about things she'd forgotten from years ago, and she learned things she'd never known at all, like how he'd been bullied and lonely at times when he was young.

She told him about punching a bully one time and getting suspended, including the fact that she'd happily do it again right then if any of Nino's bullies were there in front of her, to which Nino, after laughing and thanking her, said that they'd just been dumb kids. She realized he was more forgiving than she was, which made her think how much more there was to learn about him. She was daunted for about five seconds before getting quietly excited. She had time to get to know him. He seemed to want to get to know her right back.

She also begged him shamelessly to show her a picture of him from when he was little. Nino lasted until she started nudging his shoulder with her forehead and whining pitifully before he sent a message to his mom, right then and there, to ask her to send him one.

As they waited for his mom's reply, he said she obviously needed to return the favor, but all Yuriko had to do was turn on her phone and show him her background. On one side was a picture of Masami at three years old, and next to it was one of Yuriko around the same age.

"Did you edit those together?" Nino asked, leaning several degrees away from her. "I've got to say, that's a little creepy."

"Yeah, but you like it, right," she said comfortably. She smiled down at baby Masami's grin next to baby Yuriko's serious face. "Don't you have any childhood pictures of your friends?"

Nino stared at her, a smile pulling at his mouth despite himself. "I'm not going to dignify that with a response."

Then the photo came from his mom, and Yuriko immediately demanded that it be sent on to her. It was adorable, and too adorably _Nino_ for her to handle.

"I have an unrelated question," Nino stalled. "Are you going to smoosh our baby pictures together and put them on your phone?"

She stared at him. "That's Maa-chan's spot."

"Oh. All right, then."

After Nino sent her the picture, he was looking down at his phone for a suspiciously long time. Yuriko leaned closer to see what he was doing, and he turned his head and smiled at her from very, very close.

"It's nine o'clock, Yuri-chan."

She agreed, "Twenty more minutes until I invite you home with me."

"It'll take us twenty minutes to get there," Nino whined. "Can't you invite me in at the door?"

She looked at him, keeping an unrelenting expression on her face, then said, "You are a genius."

~

In the elevator on the way up to her floor, Nino said, "I'm such a romantic guy. Look, I'm walking you home, just like you wanted, and it's not like I know for sure I'll be invited in. In fact, I would say I'm both romantic and giving."

Yuriko rolled her eyes and tried not to smile. "What time is it?"

He checked his phone. "9:17."

She stepped a little closer to his side, charmed when he instinctively lifted a hand and rested it on the small of her back. "Then you're definitely not invited in, Kazu-chan. But let's kiss at the door for, I don't know..."

"Three minutes or so?" he suggested, and they grinned at each other in perfect accord. He leaned closer to her, resting his cheek on her hair, and she pressed up against him with a happy sigh. Nino was wearing a nice pair of jeans and a surprisingly cool jacket, and, as if he were putting in extra effort to please her, he smelled particularly appealing that night.

"Cologne?" she asked in a low voice.

He made an embarrassed noise. "Aiba-chan swore it'd go over well, but I'll be sure to tell him it--"

"--was a huge hit," she said firmly. "Good job, Aiba-chan."

He groaned, disappointed, but she could tell he was pleased underneath. She stepped even closer to nose at his throat, trying to sniff out the source of the scent, and managed to surprise a whimper out of him instead.

"I'm ticklish?" he said, a little breathless.

"Sure."

The next time she touched the same place, she just flicked it lightly with her tongue, and the noise Nino made that time had her wanting to climb him like a tree.

The elevator doors opened and Nino sprang away from her guiltily.

No one was there. Yuriko gave him an amused look. "Jumpy, Kazu-chan?"

He'd already moved on and was checking his phone again as he walked toward her door. "9:19, Yuri-chan. Catch up, would you; I'm walking you to your door, after all."

She waited, feeling contrary, but when he got to her door and turned to see where she was, she took off at a run and raced down the hall to collide smack into his chest.

He let out a winded _oof_ , but she just clung to him and turned her face up for her long-awaited kiss at the door. Instead of complaining about her probably bruising his ribs, Nino just wrapped his arms around her and kissed her.

"Don't use too much tongue," Yuriko mumbled. "My neighbors are old and probably have bad hearts."

He pulled back, mouth curving slowly, then dropped a smooch on the tip of her nose. "Sometimes I think I have a bad heart, but then I realize it's only around you."

She stared at him. "I have no idea what to say to that, Kazu."

His eyes widened as the sappiness of what he'd said hit him. She could actually see his blush form on his cheeks, but he was stubborn, so he just said, "I'm sure it's hard to deal with so much romance performed with so much skill and--oh look, it's 9:21! Not that I want to move on from this moment or anything."

Yuriko waited until he met her eyes again, then stepped close, tilted her head back, and pressed her lips to the mole on his chin.

"Come home with me, Kazu?"

"Yes," he said automatically, but she wasn't done.

"There are lots of other places we haven't kissed."

"I told you," he laughed, "we're not kissing in Masami's room! Frankly, it's a little weird that you even want to--"

"I don't mean her room," she interrupted impatiently, taking his hand and bringing it up to her chest. "As an example... you still haven't kissed me here."

Nino closed his eyes and looked pained even as his hand squeezed her breast automatically. "Why did I give back the spare key... Yuri-chan, I would've had that door open by now."

"Oh!" she said, realizing, and fished her key out of her purse to unlock the door. He started to move away, but she grabbed his hand and held it in place and got the door open at the same time. She said, voice gravelly, "No more waiting," and pulled him into the apartment after her.

Unexpectedly, they had an awkward bit of space between them as they took off their shoes, but when Yuriko looked up nervously, Nino was there.

"Places we haven't kissed, huh," he said, eyes warm. He brushed a hand down her arm and lifted it, pushing back her sleeve to bare her wrist. "Like here?" he asked, and pressed his lips right over her pulse.

"Mmhmm," she said and wrapped an arm around his shoulders to yank him along with her. "Bedroom now, Kazu."

He followed along willingly, but he also said, "Oh, and how about here?" and lifted her hair so that he could brush his mouth under her ear.

Yuriko said, "It's dangerous to do that while I'm walking," and pushed him up against the wall in the hallway.

Nino was keeping his face very serious, but he couldn't do anything about the way his eyes laughed down at her. He still smelled so good, and she wanted him so much...

"Bedroom now," she repeated, sounding far more like a robot than she'd meant to, and determinedly took him by the elbow and dragged him after her into her room.

After that everything got a little hazy for a while, mostly because they were kissing, and they'd gotten really, really good at kissing each other senseless. They were on her bed, all wrapped up in each other like they'd been several times before, but this time Nino's thigh was pressing between her legs, and this time when she clutched at him needily, she didn't have to keep her hands above his waist.

"I never knew how great your butt is," she mumbled, nipping at his jaw, and he chuckled.

"Oh, Yuri-chan, could you do that thing with your bra again? Or does that not work with dresses..." He didn't sound like he'd be heartbroken either way, especially with how he'd started kissing down her neck as his leg pushed more firmly against her.

She shuddered, barely getting out, "I'd have to sit up," but he didn't seem to realize that she didn't mean _stop_ , because the next thing she knew he was sitting up beside her and looking at her expectantly.

Still, she wasn't about to waste the opportunity to remove clothing, so she sat up and had her bra off and to the floor in under a minute, her cardigan next to it.

"I'm also very good at removing dresses," she said, deadpan, but Nino shook his head, pupils dilated as he stared at her.

"Not yet," he said, and he took her breasts in both hands right through her dress. "Last time, I just really wanted to do this." He kissed his way down her neck again, but this time he didn't stop, just pressed his lips to her collarbone, the fabric of her dress, the curve of her chest as he squeezed with his hands, and then, when she was about to insist that it would all really be even more fun without her clothes, he bent his head to take one of her nipples in his mouth.

She shouldn't have been able to feel that much through the wool, but somehow she was overwhelmed with the heat of him as he used his mouth on her, and the scratchy fabric was only more stimulation. She pulled on his hair, unable to stop herself, and he made a pleased noise and kept going.

"Take something off and do the other one," she demanded. She tried to think, then added, "Preferably everything."

He laughed against her and switched to the other side, but as she was about to reiterate her need for him to get naked, she realized he was taking off his jacket while he teased her nipple with his teeth.

"Showoff," she mumbled, but it definitely came out as a compliment.

Nino got his shirt off as well before he stopped, and by then she was pulling at his hair again and making more demands which came out only as incoherent noises. He moved up to kiss her on the mouth, but she laid her palm over his chin and held him in place.

"There are lots of places I haven't kissed either, Kazu." His eyes widened with what looked a lot like encouragement, so she removed her hand and pushed him down on the bed so that she could straddle his hips. He still had his jeans on, but that was it, and she hadn't gotten such a good look at him when they were in the pool. Her hands traced his shoulders, his chest, then up to his neck, and she followed that same path in kisses right afterward.

A sudden thought had her stilling, then sitting back on her haunches to look down at him seriously.

"I forgot to tell you about the goats."

His half-lidded eyes went wide before he draped an elbow over his face to hide himself. "Yuriko..." he said, and she couldn't tell if he was tempted to laugh or to cry.

She realized she was perched right over his hips, so she started rocking slightly, forgetting all about the goat cafe, and Nino's hands moved up to hold her waist.

"Putting goats far, far aside," he said breathlessly, "I'd really love an exhibition of your dress removal skills now."

She smiled at him smugly, and half a minute later the dress was on the floor next to her bra. It was only then, of course, that she remembered she was wearing leggings, and underwear below those, and she sighed in frustration.

Nino, however, just watched the motion of that sigh as it played out, and now there wasn't a single bit of fabric between his eyes and her breasts. A moment later, he was touching her, too, and Yuriko forgot about irritating clothing that didn't just disappear and leaned into his touch with an appreciative moan.

As he touched her, she started rocking again, feeling him get harder beneath her.

Yuriko waited as long as she could, then admitted, "I'm not feeling very patient right now," and Nino said immediately, "Well, if you insist."

He flipped them over and dropped down to get his mouth on her breasts, hands pulling down her leggings while he was at it. She lifted her hips to help, or maybe she just had to move them because of the unbearably wonderful feeling of his tongue on her skin, and managed to kick them the rest of the way off herself so that he could keep doing exactly what he was doing.

He slid his fingers under the elastic of her underwear next and teasingly lifted them away from her body, a preview of being all the way naked without giving her what she wanted.

"And your pants," she gasped. "And a condom. We'll bask later, right?"

"You're the one who's a genius," he said, but she couldn't agree with him when he'd started sucking on her nipple in that way that made her want to scream. Clearly genius came in many different forms.

Then her underwear were gone, and his mouth was gone, which was far more heartbreaking, but then, at last, he'd lost the rest of his clothes, too. She took one look at him, then another, then lay down on her belly, put her chin in her hands, and lost herself in staring.

"Um," Nino said, kneeling on the bed in front of her eyes.

Yuriko reminded him, "And a condom," trying not to blink.

He shrugged and moved to get one from his jeans pocket, and she just lay there and ogled him. She was going to have to propose a rule that all their lounging be done without clothes, and they definitely didn't need any obstructive bedding either: nothing that could cover him up at all.

He rolled the condom on with his usual quick competence, then knelt in front of her again and waited.

After a while, Yuriko looked up at him and caught him looking down at her with such affection that she felt it like a blow to the chest.

"All right then," she muttered, realizing that she was having a threesome: herself, Nino, and her feelings for him, which were ridiculous. However, even she knew not to say that last thought out loud, and besides, she kind of thought she might explode if they didn't do the whole penetration thing _immediately_ , so she twisted around on the bed to lay on her back.

Nino was visibly about to make some sort humorous remark when Yuriko spread her legs and watched him choke on nothing instead.

"Um," he managed, after several seconds that were only occupied with staring. "Yuri, I haven't kissed you there, either, and--"

"Later," she said, body going molten at the mental picture. "Later, lots and lots."

He stroked himself over the condom and met her eyes. "How about just one more kiss, though?"

Yuriko was feeling extremely impatient, like maybe she might pass out from needing him to put it in already, but sex wasn't _just_ about what she wanted, she knew. She tried not to sound begrudging as she said, "All right."

She wondered if he'd take his opportunity to kiss her there after all, or if he'd get one last smooch on her breasts, of which she could tell he was already very fond. Instead, Nino laid himself carefully down over her body and kissed her on the lips.

It was gentle, and sentimental, with plenty of tongue this time, and Yuriko quivered underneath him and tried not to blurt out just how much she loved him.

She wasn't afraid to tell him, not really, but it did seem like the sort of thing they'd have to talk about, and if they weren't fucking within the next ten seconds--

Like he could sense she was at her limit, Nino murmured against Yuriko's mouth, "Ready?" She nodded fervently.

As he pushed into her, he kissed her again, harder this time even as he moved slowly with his hips.

"You're a really good kisser," Yuriko mumbled, in place of saying _I love you._

Nino grinned against her and kept kissing.

"And you feel really good, though you could move a little faster," she said next. She really wished she could stop talking.

He paused. He stopped kissing her, too. She considered grabbing him by the hips and yanking him into her, but decided that wouldn't be fair to him at all if he really wanted to take it slow.

She realized he was looking at her and made an effort to meet his eyes.

He looked worried.

"Yuri, are you freaking out?" he said softly.

Just then, Yuriko realized that she was freaking out. She squeezed her eyes shut, considering her options.

It took a little while and was almost physically painful to forcibly remember that he liked her as she was. She didn't need to be this panicked, at least not without talking about it to him. She reminded herself that she never did well when she was lying to herself--or to him. Being understanding was just so hard when it wasn't someone _else_ she needed patience for.

Confessing when Nino was already halfway--and _only_ halfway--inside her was the least terrible of all her terrible options, but that didn't make it fun. Steeling herself, she looked straight into his anxious brown eyes and said, "I fell for you the first time I saw you."

Nino actually _smiled._

Yuriko frowned at him. "Did you hear me? From the first time I saw you with Masami." She immediately regretted saying her best friend's name while she was fucking her best friend's ex-boyfriend, but it seemed like a very minor issue in comparison to everything else. It was weirdly comforting to say something that should've been deeply weird--and not care. She was a hundred times more worried about having confessed.

He seemed to realize that smiling at her wasn't helping her with the freaking out. His face went gentle as he said, "I'm flattered. Yuri, it's okay, it really is."

She let out a breath that she felt like she'd been holding in for years. "Oh. Okay then."

After a moment of considering, she reached up and grabbed his hips and pulled him slowly to her until he was flush against her body and filling her up just like she wanted. With the weight of anxiety off her chest, she'd never felt anything better in her life. She and Nino were in her bed, and no one else, and there was nothing left between them that couldn't be worked out as they went.

Nino let out a shuddering breath of his own. Then he leaned down, said mischievously, "I was just so relieved you weren't talking about _goats_ ," and kissed her.

They kissed for a long time, first as they found their rhythm together, and then, when Nino hit just the right angle and Yuriko found just the right way to roll her hips, they kissed as they kept to it like they were never going to stop.

It was Yuriko who faltered first, but only because it felt so _good_ , better with every sure stroke Nino gave her, and she started to lose the ability to focus enough for kissing. She mouthed at his shoulder instead and clutched his ass like he might forget to keep fucking her if she didn't help.

Nino huffed a low laugh and kept going, though she thought he sped up some as if he couldn't help himself. The next moment he squeezed a hand between their bodies and sneaked it down to rub against her in a way that made her buck her hips enough that he slipped out of her. He sat up and pulled her to him by her hips so that he could push in again, stroking deeply and quickly into her, then put his hand right back and made her gasp again, this time in a way where she thought she might actually lose it altogether.

Of course, there was no need to hold back, Yuriko remembered hazily. She tilted her head back and cried out as Nino touched her in the very best way, and then, like that had broken her control, started making little breathy noises with every thrust.

Nino was a quick learner, but she knew that already. It was no surprise to her that after finding just what made her wild, he'd do it again faithfully, and again, and again. Yuriko found herself with her thighs around Nino's waist, one hand braced against the wall above her head and the other latched onto Nino's wrist as he fucked into her and rubbed her with his fingers and looked terribly, almost irrelevantly handsome.

He was sweaty and flushed, and his hair was in his eyes, but he was so focused on her, with such an intent expression, that "handsome" was still the word that came to mind. Plus, she loved him. She decided in a distant, blurry sort of way that she loved him even more when he was naked.

It was all too much. Yuriko panted out, "Don't ever wear clothes," and came. She heard distantly as Nino made a drowning sort of noise, but he only slowed down, didn't stop; he rocked his hips into her and worked her through it. She was having an orgasm and she was happily in love, and it was kind of gross to feel both at once. She concluded giddily that it was another kind of gross she liked.

A nebulous amount of time later, she caught her breath at last. Nino seemed to notice right away, of course--how could he not when he was perched over her, his chest flush with hers?--and when Yuriko opened her eyes, he was smiling at her.

"I can't believe you told me not to wear clothes," he laughed, pure delight in his voice, and she laughed with him in a slurred sort of way.

"It just popped out," she said, then remembered she'd finally confessed, too. "Oh. And the timing on that other thing..."

Nino leaned his forehead against hers. "It's all right, Yuri-chan. You can use whatever timing you want to talk to me about goats."

She laughed again, loudly this time, and had to kiss him a whole bunch. At last she gave him some breathing space, and he used it to speak more seriously.

"Really. It's all right. Let's talk more about it, okay, but it's all right, and I'm glad you told me."

"But the timing," she protested involuntarily, still unable to believe it.

He shrugged negligently, and it was at that very moment that Yuriko realized Nino was not only still inside her, he was still _hard._

"Did you not...?" she asked, feeling inexplicably guilty when he was the one who'd stopped fucking her, but he just shrugged again, looking a little tired and entirely pleased. She squinted at him in confusion. "Wait, you said you didn't have any endurance."

He complained at once, "I said I didn't want to have sex for days, Yuri, that is hardly the same thing!" As if to punctuate his words, he started rocking into her so sweetly that she had to squirm and let out a little moan.

It took her a while to gather her thoughts, but she said after a minute, "Can I sit in your lap this time?"

He groaned, " _Please_ ," then said more cautiously, "If I could brace against the wall, that'd be great."

She pictured the position and how it would support his back. She smiled. "Sounds perfect. And you're still not wearing clothes, good job on that, Kazu-chan."

They started maneuvering into position as he thanked her with a laugh. He was carefully holding the condom on, and she found it very distracting to watch.

It also reminded her that he still hadn't come. She snorted. "You said you just wanted to lie around in bed."

"Sitting around in bed is almost as good," he promised, grinning at her. "Especially if you're on top."

He leaned back against the wall invitingly. She smiled back and straddled his hips so she could sink slowly down onto him. He gave a long, contented sigh, and his hands moved to her breasts like they were coming home. She slid up and down on him once, testing it out, then kissed him as they began to find their new rhythm.

As expected, it'd been a very good idea, and Yuriko wasn't at all sorry that lying around in bed together had been postponed. With nothing planned for the next day, or even the next night, they could thoroughly tire each other out in all sorts of ways, and other than finding it strangely reassuring that they still kissed each other just as much when they didn't have to keep their clothes on, Yuriko let conscious thought go for the time being and held tight to exploring sex with Nino instead.

~

Yuriko woke tangled in the sheets. She'd pulled on a tank top at some point, though she wasn't sure why considering it was all she was wearing. She and Nino weren't touching but she had an intense awareness of his presence even before she opened her eyes.

She put that off a while longer and simply basked in the knowledge that Nino was in her bed. They'd stayed up late together the night before, taking breaks only to talk and laugh and grab snacks from the kitchen once or twice. They'd showered together when they started getting gross, but it turned out Yuriko had a real thing for shower sex, and Nino had slipped and fallen while kissing her some new places and gotten some beautiful bruises on his knees. She had maintained that bruises from sex were badges of honor, but he just told her that the shower was now crossed off their list of places to kiss and wouldn't need to be revisited. She didn't expect that rule to last longer than it took him to remember that he really liked seeing her naked, wet, and soapy. Either way, he'd finished what he'd started in the shower before they even made it back to her bed, so she didn't have any regrets.

After indulging herself for quite a while in revisiting some of her new favorite memories, Yuriko finally opened her eyes. As she'd known instinctively, Nino was lying next to her, very close, and still sleeping peacefully.

He was so close to her that he was sharing her pillow.

She stared at him, awash in feelings. He looked exactly the same...

Nino's body was turned toward her, a small smile on his sleeping face, and she bet that if he sat up, he'd have creases from her pillow on his cheek. As a moment, waking up to find Nino like this was good, sweet, entirely perfect... but also exactly the same as the first time she'd seen him.

She flashed back involuntarily and barely needed to imagine it because the scene was now right in front of her. She'd wanted a cuddle from Masami, so she'd sneaked into her best friend's closet of a bedroom in their old apartment, but she hadn't realized that Masami had a new guy staying over.

She'd walked in to see them curled up in bed, her friend asleep on her back with this new boy turned toward her, sharing her pillow. They'd looked blissful, so happy together that she'd known immediately they would last more than just the one night. Nino, as she learned his name was later, was smiling contentedly even in sleep. Yuriko wasn't sure even now whether she believed in love at first sight, but she'd known at the first sight of Nino that something in her life had irrevocably changed.

For a moment as she lay in bed with this person for whom she'd longed over so many years, Yuriko's heart quailed. She wasn't sure she wanted a relationship where there was so much potential for complication, so much potential for pain. Even if she loved him... she could choose not to be with him.

She clenched her fists in the sheets and fought her own cowardice. She knew she'd never forgive herself if she let herself run away from the one guy she'd ever truly cared about. She forced herself to look at his face and see him as he was now: older, his hair black, and a smile on his face that was because he was with her. He'd told her he was truly _with_ her, and she was going to be with him.

There were still issues with dating her best friend's ex, and it'd be different to date him when they had to plan and make time to see each other, not to mention doing it with Masami around very soon. Yuriko took one last moment to imagine letting Nino go to make her life easier. She was in the middle of saying goodbye to that terrible idea forever when Nino woke up.

He opened his eyes only to slits and scooted closer to her, smile deepening drowsily with the barest hint of his best smug grin. "Yuri, did I mention how much I like you?"

She chuckled, relieved and happy and a little ashamed at remembering her brief cold feet.

Seemingly unaware of any weirdness in the situation, he'd already closed his eyes again, but just as she thought he'd fallen back asleep, he said, "Gyoza's your favorite, right? Wanna make some together today?"

"I want to," Yuriko said immediately. "Though I don't know how."

Nino chuckled and wrapped an arm around her waist. "I'll teach you. See, my mom said she wanted to learn a few years back, and she made me and my sister go with her to a class..."

"Yeah?" she said, encouraging him to go on though it seemed like he was decreasingly awake. She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his forehead just because.

"It was a sham, I'm telling you," he murmured, sounding deeply content. "Did she think we wouldn't remember all the times she made us gyoza as kids..."

Yuriko smiled with her face close to his on the pillow, feeling sleep start to tug her down again. "She wanted to spend time with you, huh." She hesitated, then added, "I can relate. Kazu..."

She thought he gave the faintest nod, but after a moment it was clear that he was asleep again already, tranquil and snug in her bed with her.

She decided to follow his lead, only stalling enough to whisper, "I like you, too," before she snuggled into him comfortably and basked her way back to sleep.

~~~~~  
_(epilogue)_

Masami came home on a Thursday, and it seemed like she slept most of the first few days. Yuriko, who'd greeted her at the door with a friendly grope of her chest, spent a lot of time snuggling her best friend and sleeping lazily in the same bed just to keep her company. She'd missed Masami so much that she forgot to be nervous--mostly--about dating Nino while living with Nino's ex.

On Sunday, Nino came over. It wasn't nearly as awkward as she'd expected. Five years was a long time, after all, and she found out with some lingering disbelief that Nino and Masami really were becoming _friends._

Somehow, Nino and Yuriko and Masami ended up on the balcony, and though the two roommates made a few jokes about wishing their Yuu were there in the third chair instead, it was actually really nice. Yuriko stared up at the night sky and held Nino's hand while Masami told them all about her trip to Istanbul, and when it got too chilly to be outside any longer, they went in and Masami made them all a late dinner.

That it was something that she'd done for the three of them many times before, way back when, was a little weird, but Yuriko thought Masami was right. As long as they kept acknowledging the weirdness, they'd overcome it together.

Seeing Masami's double thumbs-up behind Nino's back as Yuriko and Nino headed out for a date, seeing the smile on her face and in her eyes, Yuriko believed it wholeheartedly. With that joy still fizzing through her mind, the way Nino stopped her outside the door to press her up against the wall and kiss her passionately was enough to make the future seem full of promise.

Right then, though they had plans to see a late movie, Yuriko made up her mind.

"Kazu-chan," she said breathlessly, sneaking another kiss between words. "Let's go swimming."

"Swimming!" he said, stepping back and looking theatrically alarmed. "No, see, with a movie we get to sit down and stay dry."

"Let's go swimming! Oh, or if you don't like that, we could go to the goat cafe..." she said. Trailing off made it sound like a threat, but really she thought it'd be fun to go to the goat petting zoo cafe with Nino.

Nino sighed and made an expression like he was pondering deeply and under great duress. After hiding his face in his hands for several seconds, he let them fall to his sides and said loudly, "Fine, you've convinced me. Let's do both!"

Yuriko nodded as if that made total sense, but she held up a finger as if to press pause on their important plans. "Before we do either," she said gravely, then pressed that finger to her lips. "One more kiss."

With her finger in the way, it came out in a muddle, but Nino understood her perfectly.


End file.
